The US’s first large-scale offshore wind project, located off the coast of Massachusetts, has started producing power for the first time, delivering a boost to Joe Biden’s ambitions of a proliferation of coastal wind turbines to help combat the climate crisis.
The first wind turbine in the Vineyard Wind development started to whirr on Tuesday, delivering around 5MW of power to the New England grid. The operator of the project said it expects to have five turbines operational in the early part of this year, before eventually having 62 turbines as part of the project, which will produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes.
“This is a historic moment for the American offshore wind industry,” said Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts. “This is clean, affordable energy made possible by the many advocates, public servants, union workers and business leaders who worked for decades to accomplish this achievement.”
The US has been slow to develop offshore wind compared with some other countries, but Biden has enthusiastically backed the concept, with the White House setting a goal to deploy 30GW of offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 10m homes with clean energy, and several projects are now planned.
Vineyard Wind, about 15 miles (24km) off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, is the largest so far and its launch is “truly is a milestone for offshore wind and the entire renewable industry in North America”, according to Tim Evans, a partner at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which is developing the project with Avangrid, which is itself owned by a Spanish electricity utility.
The breakthrough, which has occurred more than a year after developers started assembling and installing the 850ft-tall turbines in the ocean, comes just a month after a separate, smaller, project begun off the coast of New York. The 12-turbine project, called South Fork Wind, is operated by the Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource.
The arrival of Vineyard Wind is a welcome tonic to a nascent offshore wind industry that has struggled in the US in recent months, despite support from the Biden administration and amenable east-coast state governors.
On Wednesday, the energy giants Equinor and BP terminated their agreement to sell power to New York state from their 1,260MW Empire Wind 2 offshore windfarm, citing rising inflation, higher borrowing costs and supply chain issues. Equinor blamed “changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale”.
Last year, Ørsted also canceled two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey due to concerns over high costs, supply chain problems and the failure to secure hoped-for tax credits.
The fledgling industry has also been assailed by opponents, including Donald Trump, fishers and some environmentalists, for supposedly endangering marine life and for spoiling coastline views. Scientists have said there is little evidence that creatures such as whales are adversely affected by wind turbines.
Some of this opposition has been backed by fossil fuel-funded interests concerned that offshore wind poses a threat to the incumbency of oil, coal and gas use that is driving dangerous global heating.
