e-Poster: An Insider’s Look at Permitting the First Utility-Scale Offshore Wind Farm in the US
(Room Station 2)
22 Oct 19
3:15 PM
-
3:30 PM
Tracks:
Continuing Permitting & Leasing Momentum
The Vineyard Wind Project is an innovative renewable energy project that is on track to become the first commercial utility-scale offshore wind farm constructed in the United States. This 800-megawatt wind energy project will be located on the Outer Continental Shelf in lease area OCS-A 0501, approximately 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Buried offshore and onshore cables will transmit power generated from the wind farm to a grid interconnection point in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. Environmental permitting of the Vineyard Wind Project has been a complex, multi-year process. The Project was the first of the current generation of US offshore wind projects to file its Construction and Operations Plan with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Project is being permitted using the novel “Project Envelope” concept, which has allowed Vineyard Wind to properly define and bracket Project characteristics for purposes of environmental review while maintaining a reasonable degree of flexibility. Permitting documents for the project provided a comprehensive assessment of impacts to air and water quality, geology, fisheries and benthic habitat, birds, marine mammals and sea turtles, coastal habitats, local economies and populations, visual resources, navigation, and historic and archaeological resources. This presentation provides a review of several of the key issues that were successfully addressed during environmental permitting.