Four developers file proposals for offshore wind farms

Four wind farm developers last week filed proposals to build a new wave of towering turbines in waters south of New England, offering hope that a nascent industry can be sparked back to life after stalling out amid rising costs. The proposals were due Wednesday in what is, to some extent, a re-do of prior wind development efforts that were shelved amid sharply rising interest rates and supply costs. To boost interest, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey decided to team up with governors in Rhode Island and Connecticut to conduct a joint solicitation, with a goal of offering larger contracts by combining forces — a move that industry leaders say will help make projects more economically feasible. Many specific details of the bids — such as the price for power and construction costs — were not available on Wednesday. Inevitably, these bids will provide higher reimbursements for the developers, to be funded through electric utility contracts, than the earlier wave of bids did. In Massachusetts, the state Department of Energy Resources will review the bids along with the state’s three main electric utilities and select winners by Aug. 7. So far, offshore construction has only begun on two large-scale wind farms in the region, Ørsted’s newly built South Fork Wind, which provides 130 megawatts of electricity to New York consumers on Long Island, and Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners that is going up south of Martha’s Vineyard and will provide 800 megawatts of power for Massachusetts once it’s complete. (A small wind farm, the country’s first, was built off Block Island in 2016.) Several other proposals in waters off the Northeast have been shelved because of the costs, sowing doubts that offshore wind can quickly address the region’s demands for clean energy. — JON CHESTO