New Push for Wind Power
With the nation’s first offshore wind farm set to begin operation in November, but the Long Island Power Authority’s formal support for a larger installation 30 miles off Montauk still on hold, a consortium of developers, environmental groups, and others have formed the New York Offshore Wind Alliance to pressure state officials to make a long-term, large-scale commitment to offshore wind power.
Such a commitment, Liz Gordon, the group’s director, said in a statement, is essential to the state’s Clean Energy Standard, a mandate requiring that half of New York’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. The consortium’s specific objective is a commitment from the state to develop 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. It plans to build support for that goal through advocacy and public education.
Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that recently completed construction of the 30-megawatt, five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm and seeks to build a 90-megawatt, 15-turbine wind farm east of Montauk, is on the Offshore Wind Alliance’s steering committee. The Long Island Power Authority was set to formally accept Deepwater Wind’s proposal for the latter installation, but postponed the move hours before a July 20 board of directors meeting at the request of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
Officials of NYSERDA, according to a statement issued at the time, wanted to examine the proposal “in the broader context of the Offshore Wind Master Plan” the agency was preparing. A draft blueprint of that plan would be completed “in the next few weeks,” according to the July statement, but Dayle Zatlin, the agency’s assistant director of communications, said on Tuesday that a date for its release has not been set. “We do expect it to be soon,” she said.
“We have been obliged to postpone the vote on that issue until the blueprint is actually out there,” Sid Nathan, a LIPA spokesman, said on Tuesday regarding Deepwater Wind’s 90-megawatt wind farm proposal. “We are still anticipating it will be on NYSERDA’s blueprint.”
Renewable Energy Long Island, an East Hampton advocacy group, is also a partner in the Offshore Wind Alliance. The alliance, said Gordian Raacke, ReLi’s executive director, “came about because it’s pretty apparent that the U.S. will, at last, start building an offshore wind industry and tapping into the huge offshore wind power potential. Now that we have the first offshore wind project almost up and running, it’s pretty clear that this is a turning point, and offshore wind will become a major part of our energy supply.”
Still, “there is a lot more work to be done,” Mr. Raacke said. “It’s about building an industry.” Europe, he said, has been generating energy from offshore wind for decades, while “the U.S. is just getting started.”
The alliance, he said, “is a way to educate people about the benefits of offshore wind and advocate for tapping into that potential in a big way.” He cited the goal of 5,000 megawatts by 2030. “We’re going to push hard for that.”
LIPA’s next board of trustees meeting is scheduled for Wednesday. “We’re not going to let up” in pressuring the utility to meet Long Island’s electricity demand with renewable sources, Mr. Raacke said.