GOV. CHARLIE BAKER said the state’s latest offshore wind procurement shows the industry is moving into a new phase geared toward building an American supply chain.
“It speaks to two things,” Baker said. “One is there is a belief at this point that the federal administration is rowing in the same direction as the rest of us with respect to getting a lot of this work done. Number two, there’s tremendous enthusiasm for these projects at the state level all the way up and down the East Coast. And I think people at this point are very anxious to put the infrastructure in place that they’re going to need not just to do the one thing that might be part of that bid but to think bigger about how this might serve a larger strategy up and down the coast.”
The Massachusetts procurement, the state’s third, was split between the companies that won the first two procurements — Avangrid Renewables won 1,200 megawatts with its Commonwealth Wind project and Mayflower Wind won a 400 megawatt deal.
The two companies say their projects will come with significant onshore investment, including a subsea cable manufacturing facility and a electric converter station at Brayton Point in Somerset, a 42-acre offshore wind staging area in Salem, and assorted other investments in New Bedford and Fall River.
The biggest surprise was the Prysmian Group manufacturing plant in Somerset. Bill White, the head of US offshore wind at Avangrid Renewables, said his firm is using one of the Italian company’s European plants as the supplier of cable for Vineyard Wind, the first industrial scale offshore wind farm in the United States.
By promising to use Prysmian as the supplier for Commonwealth Wind and another Avangrid project off of Connecticut called Park City Wind, White convinced the Milan-based company to open a plant with 200 workers at Brayton Point.
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Editor, CommonWealth
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
“That gives them the certainty they need and they can see the pipeline ahead,” White said, referring to a host of offshore wind farms in development up and down the East Coast.
Baker said he’s excited industry players are starting to look beyond a single bid. “What you now have is an industry that’s starting to think about the buildout of a gigawatt system of deepwater wind up and down the East Coast,” he said. “I think it’s a really positive sign not just for that bid but for the next one that’s going to come after that as well.”
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