Environmentalists and politicians have been hyping up offshore wind projects in the waters around Massachusetts for years, but now those plans have been abandoned. Jon Chesto reports in the Boston Globe:
As anticipated, SouthCoast Wind has announced it will seek to terminate the utility contracts it needs to finance the construction of a giant offshore wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard, citing significant increases in the cost of the project.
The move follows Avangrid’s decision last fall to do the same thing with contracts for a similar project, dubbed Commonwealth Wind, which was also proposed for waters south of the Vineyard. Industry insiders had expected SouthCoast Wind to follow, because its contracts are based on the same economics as Commonwealth Wind’s. But until now, despite conceding similar cost concerns, SouthCoast Wind’s leaders avoided definitively answering the question whether they would need to terminate their contracts too.
Regulatory pressure in Rhode Island, however, apparently forced SouthCoast’s hand. That state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board has been reviewing a proposed power line that SouthCoast (formerly known as Mayflower Wind) has planned through Portsmouth, R.I., for the project, with a hearing scheduled on June 12 to go over the project’s financial viability.
On Friday, SouthCoast informed the Rhode Island siting board that it has started discussions with Massachusetts officials and electric utilities about terminating the wind farm’s power purchase agreements. The SouthCoast project would generate 1,200 megawatts, or enough power for more than one million homes and businesses.
Read more here.