Vineyard Wind has asked US President Joe Biden’s five-day-old administration to resume the federal permitting process for its commercial-scale offshore wind project off Massachusetts, saying an internal “final technical review” showed no changes are necessary to the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) after a late switch to GE Renewable Energy’s 13MW Haliade-X turbine.

As a result, Vineyard CEO Lars Pedersen expects that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the federal industry regulatory agency, “can finalise their review based on the extensive analysis and studies of the project over the last three years.”

“We look forward to completing the permitting phase of the project and to finalizing the engineering, contracting and financing of the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the US,” he added.

On 1 December, Boston-based Vineyard abruptly announced it was withdrawing the COP for the estimated $2bn, fully-contracted 800MW Vineyard Wind I array to complete “necessary due diligence” associated with inclusion of Haliade-X’s – it now says 62 - into the project design instead of 84, V174-9.5MW turbines from MHI Vestas.

At the time, Vineyard, owned 50-50 by Iberdrola-controlled Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), described the move as a “short pause” with the expectation that BOEM could “promptly restart the process” after it resubmitted the COP in several weeks.

BOEM disagreed. It published a 16 December notice in the Federal Register, the official record of the US government, that said its preparation of a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) - the last major step in the permitting process timeline culminating in potential issuance of a construction permit - was “terminated” and in effect “immediately.”

Completion of the FEIS had been delayed several times for different reasons since August 2019 by former President Donald Trump’s administration, most recently on 11 December. Vineyard Wind I was the furthest along of about 10 offshore projects from Massachusetts to Virginia in BOEM’s permitting pipeline.

BOEM later told Recharge that Vineyard is welcome to submit a new COP, “at which time BOEM will begin an appropriate environmental and technical review.”

Vineyard, however, views the Federal Register notice as not having “any legal meaning” in BOEM’s permitting and review process under the 1970 National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). This law requires that any major federal action that is likely to have a significant impact on the environment requires an EIS.

Pedersen said Monday that it is his view publication in the Federal Register was a “notification to the public that BOEM had stopped its review, which is not unsurprising since we asked them to stop that review.”

“So, I think there’s nothing preventing them from telling the world that they are reviewing the project again, but of course it’s up to BOEM what exactly that process will be when they decide to review the project again,” he said.

The developer remains hopeful BOEM will publish the FEIS and a record of decision (ROD) in the first half of this year.

Pedersen told journalists that while Vineyard was in “detailed contact” with both the Biden and Trump campaigns prior to national elections last November, no specific discussions have occurred with the new administration.

“We have had sort of initial indications from the Biden team in general that they are favourable to renewable energy, but I don’t think I’ve seen any specific or particular announcement regarding offshore wind,” he said.

During the campaign, Biden said he wanted to see “thousands of turbines” installed at sea during his four-year term. BOEM is an agency of the Department of Interior. He has nominated strongly pro-renewables US Congresswoman Deb Haaland to head the department and there is no public indication that she will not win confirmation by the Senate.

Wind

Iberdrola asks US to resume federal permitting at Vineyard offshore wind project