July 18, 2019 — The federal government has offered new “guidance” on the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project, Gov. Charlie Baker said, but neither the governor’s team nor project officials will talk about it.
The Baker administration chose Vineyard Wind in May 2018 for the state’s first commercial-scale offshore wind effort under a 2016 clean energy law and state officials are counting on the project to produce 800 megawatts of power and touting its importance to the state’s renewable energy portfolio. In April, state regulators approved long-term contracts between Vineyard Wind and the state’s electricity distribution companies.
But project officials announced last week that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) was not ready, as Vineyard Wind expected it to be, to complete a critical final environmental impact statement.
A long delay could affect project financing, as well as plans to start construction later this year and become operational in 2021, but questions remain about the federal government’s stance on the project.
In Connecticut on Tuesday, Baker said that his team and project officials have been given a clearer understanding of the issues in play, and are working this month to address them.
“We’ve talked to the federal agencies about this,” Baker said. “They’ve made pretty clear to us that the reason they didn’t render a decision and the reason why they didn’t put a date on rendering a decision was because they wanted to continue the dialogue and the discussion with Vineyard Wind around some of the outstanding issues and they gave Vineyard Wind and us a fair amount of guidance with respect to the things we should focus on and people are going to be focusing on those between now and the end of the month.”
On Wednesday, a Baker spokesman declined to comment when asked about the nature of the project guidance.
A Vineyard Wind spokesman also declined to comment when asked what the feds have told project officials.
Baker, who says Vineyard Wind will be the largest offshore wind project in the country and will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, on Wednesday said he thought the federal government treated offshore wind projects as “standalone, fact specific issues.”