State Expanding Wind Energy Terminal In New Bedford

The quasi-public Massachusetts Clean Energy Center announced plans Wednesday to expand its offshore wind staging and deployment facility in New Bedford, including the acquisition of four abutting parcels to expand the working area and better organize the facility's layout.

MassCEC said it has committed $45 million in funding for the project at the 30-acre New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal, which is currently in use as the staging and pre-assembly port for the Vineyard Wind 1 project. The center said the expansion project "is needed to maintain and increase Massachusetts' competitiveness in the emerging offshore wind industry by providing facilities that will support the anticipated increased demand for port facilities that can deploy the larger, heavier turbine parts as proposed by offshore wind facilities."

"As the offshore wind industry grows and expands, so does Massachusetts’ port infrastructure. Throughout its history, the Port of New Bedford has served as a nexus of New England’s economy, from whaling, to fishing, to offshore wind," Gov. Maura Healey said. "The investments in and expansion of the port will help maintain Massachusetts’ global leadership in offshore wind."

In addition to absorbing four next-door properties, the expansion project will include the relocation and construction of a new office and warehouse building, and the redevelopment of an old bulkhead at the edge of the harbor into "a new high bearing capacity quayside," and development of additional heavy lift storage area. MassCEC said the finished product will expand available heavy-lift storage space by five acres to a total of 26 contiguous acres (a 24 percent increase), increase the total heavy-lift quayside available at the terminal by 200 linear feet to 1,200 linear feet (a 20 percent increase), and provide additional office and warehouse space for terminal tenants.

The expansion project is expected to be completed by December 2026, MassCEC said.

"The Port of New Bedford is both a local and global economic powerhouse," Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said. "As the former mayor of a historic port-turned-offshore wind facility, I know firsthand the boost this transformation can offer a community like New Bedford, which has born the brunt of polluting fossil fuel plants."

On Thursday, Healey, Driscoll, MassCEC CEO Emily Reichert and other officials will be in Salem, the city Driscoll led as mayor for 17 years, for the groundbreaking of the state's second major offshore wind port. Florida-based shipping company Crowley sold the property on Salem's waterfront to MassCEC earlier this year, but entered into a lease agreement with MassCEC and will manage the site redevelopment and improvements and then serve as the terminal operator. The Salem port facility is expected to open in 2026.

The Salem facility is expected to play a crucial role in the expansion of offshore wind installations since its location north of Boston could provide developers with better access to offshore wind lease areas in the Gulf of Maine that the federal government is moving towards selling as early as this year.

And MassCEC is working on other expansion projects as well. Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said last year that the Healey administration is pursuing an expansion of MassCEC's Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown.

The Charlestown site opened in 2011 as the first facility in North America capable of testing the blades that power offshore wind turbines, replicating the stress of a 25-year lifespan at sea in the course of just a few months. But when the testing site got a 107-meter blade built for the GE Haliade-X turbines, the kind used on the Vineyard Wind 1 project, a section of the blade had to be cut off to allow for testing.

MassCEC's website says the current facility can test blade sections up to 90 meters in length and a fact sheet provided by EEA in 2023 said that the testing facility would need to expand from about 300 feet to between 460 and 490 feet long, and from 85 feet to at least 131 feet tall to be able to test new blades of up to 150 meters. In all, the project was estimated to cost between $60 million and $70 million.

The MassCEC Board recently approved the allocation of $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to fund the initial design work to get the project to shovel-ready status and the center is working with the Mass. Port Authority as its agent for the procurement and management of design and construction services, the center said. MassCEC said Massport has issued an RFQ on the center's behalf for design services.

The flurry of activity around offshore wind comes as Vineyard Wind tries to bounce back from the incident involving one of its blades that shattered, sending debris to the shores of Nantucket and other locations and bringing the project to a halt. Project officials have resumed limited activities, but have not powered back up while a federal investigation continues.

At an event in Mattapan Tuesday, reporters asked Healey about due diligence before starting operations up again at Vineyard Wind.

"It's under investigation by the federal authorities," Healey said. "They need to complete that. I hope they complete that as soon as possible. It's important that we bring this back online. It is a very, very important industry to Massachusetts. It's very important for the clean energy future, and I'm confident we get there."

President Joe Biden has goals of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035. In the latest sign of government forging ahead with the new energy source despite struggles to make it a reality so far, the U.S. Department of the Interior on Wednesday auctioned off two Central Atlantic wind energy areas. The plots near the coasts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia are projected to be able to harness enough wind energy to power 2.2 million homes.