Green light for massive East Coast offshore wind project

Hari Sreenivasan:

Finally tonight, we wanted to provide a quick update on a story that we first brought you earlier this spring. It's on the fate of a proposed offshore wind energy project off the coast of Massachusetts. NewsHour Weekend's Ivette Feliciano has more.

Ivette Feliciano:

This week, federal regulators made it official: Vineyard Wind will be the first large-scale offshore wind energy project in the United States. As we reported in late March, this nearly $3 billion project off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, will generate enough electricity for about 400,000 homes. The CEO of Vineyard Wind, Lars Pedersen, says this new project will kickstart the industry.

Lars Pedersen:

This is not about a single project this is about an industry, an industry that is going to revitalize waterfronts up and down the Eastern seaboard, create well-paying jobs, and deliver clean affordable energy to households while the states are transitioning from fossil and nuclear power plants to a green future.

Ivette Feliciano:

The United States currently has only two small projects – 7 turbines in total – in operation. Vineyard will be the first to use a new turbine made by GE that stands more than 850 feet tall, with each of its three blades stretching more than the length of a football field.

Lars Pedersen:

Every time the blade spins twice, you can power a home for a day. So it's really impressive hardware. So we have been able to shrink the footprint of the project from 108 positions down to 62 while still producing the power we have promised to Massachusetts.

Ivette Feliciano:

With the approval earlier this week, Pedersen says the project is on track to start construction later this year, and start producing power for the grid by 2023.