Plant would make area a player in green energy
Wind turbine assembly facility at Albany port expected to employ 300
Capital Region lawmakers and business promoters took a victory lap on Thursday to tout Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s State of the State announcement that an expanded Port of Albany would host what they said will be the nation’s first facility for manufacturing giant wind turbine towers.
Part of a plan to build a series of turbine farms off the Long Island coast, the factory will represent one of the region’s newest and largest industrial facilities, employing an estimated 300 people once completed.
“This is something we’ve worked on for the past three years,” Port of Albany General Manager Rich Hendrick said
during a news conference at the port.
While the port was viewed as a top contender for building the wind towers going to the Long Island area, Cuomo in Wednesday’s State of the State address confirmed that. He also said that the Long Island coast
would be home to two more wind installations built by the Norwegian-based Equinor. That’s in addition to the projects already approved off Long Island being built by Equinor and Danish firm Orsted.
The new manufacturing
facility also will represent a physical expansion of the existing Port of Albany, as it will be built across the Normanskill Creek in the town of Bethlehem, adjacent to Albany’s southern border.
Construction on the plant is expected to start in 2022 and will include a 500-foot wharf, said Megan Daly, the port’s director of economic development and procurement.
Materials for the 400foot-plus towers will be brought to the plant by vessels on the Hudson River. Once the towers are made at the plant, they will be transported by river to their off-shore locations, Daly said
She and others said they believe that, once the Long Island projects are built, the plant will continue to operate as a regional hub for wind tower manufacturing. The ability to move towers down the Hudson River to the Atlantic
coast makes the port an ideal spot, they said.
European companies have dominated much of the wind turbine building industry, but the port’s facility should make the U.S. a player in this emerging field as well.
“It places us here in the Capital Region at the center of the off-shore wind industry in the United States,” said Doreen Harris, acting president and CEO of the state Energy Research and Development Association, or NYSERDA. NYSERDA will administer the contracts with the wind companies and the firms that will operate the new facility – Marmen Inc. and Welcon A/S.
Marmem is a Quebecbased manufacturing firm and Welcon is a Danish wind tower builder.
The project, estimated at $350 million, will contain 600,000 square feet of manufacturing space in four buildings.
It will also include a training program to hire workers at the plant. Many of these jobs will entail new manufacturing technologies and the pay should average about $100,000 per year, said Harris. They’ll be subject to union agreements and the new plant will make efforts to hire minority employees.
The port is located in Albany’s South End where many Black residents live. The surrounding neighborhoods have been battling high unemployment and blight for years.
Expanding southward into Bethlehem is also a welcome move for that neighboring community, said town Supervisor David Vanluven. It was too soon, however, to say how much the plant would add to the town’s tax base, which supports municipal operations and schools.
Most of the talk on Thursday morning centered on the employment the project should bring. “It’s going to be jobs,” said Democratic state Sen. Neil Breslin. “It’s a tremendous, tremendous boost.”