Avangrid receives ROD for New England Wind
Avangrid, Inc., a leading sustainable energy company and member of the Iberdrola Group, has announced that it has received the federal Record of Decision (ROD) from the Department of the Interior for New England Wind. The ROD represents a significant permitting milestone that brings the lease area closer to full federal approval for construction, with the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) Approval anticipated for July 2024. Issuance of the ROD by the Department of the Interior comes after years of robust stakeholder engagement with Tribal Nations, members of local residential and fishing communities, and other ocean users. New England Wind, consisting of the New England Wind 1 and New England Wind 2 projects, has the potential to create thousands of jobs and provide enough clean, reliable energy to power nearly 1 million homes and businesses in the region. Avangrid is spearheading the development of the first-in-the-nation Vineyard Wind 1 project, currently under construction and delivering clean, reliable power to 30 000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts.
In late March, 2024, Avangrid submitted multiple proposals for the New England Wind projects to the Massachusetts-Rhode Island-Connecticut Multi-State Procurement for Offshore Wind. The states are anticipated to announce selected projects from the competitive procurement in August 2024.
The ROD comes after years of analysis of potential environmental impacts of Avangrid’s construction, operation, and conceptual decommissioning plans by BOEM. Stakeholder engagement for this critical environmental review included three virtual public meetings hosted by BOEM to solicit additional feedback on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) published in late December 2023 and consideration of over 750 comments received from the public. BOEM responded to all comments received in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), recently published on February 26, 2024. The DEIS, FEIS, and ROD are available on BOEM’s website.
New England Wind 1 is an exceptionally advanced and shovel-ready project in federal lease area OCS-A 0534, roughly 30 miles south of Barnstable, Massachusetts and making landfall under the Craigville Beach parking lot. The project will border Vineyard Wind 1 to the south.
The ROD builds on the project’s complete state, regional, and local permitting, a signed host community agreement with the Town of Barnstable, and a Project Labor Agreement with the Massachusetts Building Trades. If selected in the current competitive procurement, the project can begin construction as soon as next year and achieve commercial operations before the end of the decade, helping achieve ambitious 2030 state climate targets set by the New England states.
New England Wind 1 also offers transformational economic opportunities for the region, including catalysing a new staging and assembly port in Salem; bringing an offshore wind davit crane manufacturer to New Bedford, Massachusetts; locating Operations and Maintenance facilities in Bridgeport, Connecticut and New Bedford; and delivering an offshore wind training hub with Survival Systems USA at the Port of Davisville in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
The New England Wind lease area is projected to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 4 million t, or the equivalent of taking approximately 700 000 cars off the road each year during the lifespan of the project. Combined, the projects will create up to 9200 full-time equivalent jobs and bring US$8 billion in direct investment to the region.
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Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/wind/05042024/avangrid-receives-rod-for-new-england-wind/
