Massachusetts is among the American states exploring sourcing electricity from planned offshore wind farms in Atlantic Canada, following the US market-stalling moratorium imposed on the industry by the Trump administration earlier this year.
The state, home to the pioneering 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind 1 project brought online last year, is one of six in the US Northeast aiming to shift to renewable energy-based power grids before 2040.
But a representative from the Massachusetts energy department suggested they were being forced to rethink options for reaching a targeted 5,600 MW of offshore wind power this decade since Donald Trump — who has long been a vociferous opponent of “windmills” — made good on a threat to halt a number of multi-billion dollar projects on “day one” of his second presidency.
Maria Hardiman, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, told Canada’s National Observer her department was now in “regular communication” around developing “new energy sources,” including Canadian offshore wind that would allow it to lower electricity costs and boost energy independence in the state and the wider US Northeast.
“Building on our efforts to connect our regions through transmission, there are significant opportunities to construct new onshore and offshore wind projects across Canada and the [North American] northeast,” she said.
“We will continue to explore these partnerships to bring down energy bills and bolster the energy independence of our region.”
Industry insiders say other states in the region, led by New York, are investigating tapping projects off the province of Nova Scotia, which is set for a first leasing of construction sites later this year.
Yet, Massachusetts was the only state that would specifically comment on whether it was looking to source Canadian offshore wind power, when approached by Canada’s National Observer.
A spokesperson for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), a public-benefit corporation that handles power procurement for the state — which has a nation-leading target of bringing 9,000 MW of offshore wind onto its grid by 2035 — said it “continues to be focused on advancing the offshore wind industry in the US.”
“We applaud Canada for growing its offshore wind industry which will help to spur additional innovation and support expansion in the North American market,” NYSERDA spokesperson Deanna Cohen told Canada’s National Observer.
States keeping projects low-profile
Industry observers suggest many states have opted to progress projects in “relative silence,” hoping that keeping a low profile will save their developments from Trump’s anti-offshore wind ire.
However, several market analysts believe Trump’s pullback on what had been a steadily-maturing US offshore wind sector will mean there is a “golden opportunity” for Canada to deliver power to key markets south of the border.
“The US, which was expected to become one of the world’s main [offshore wind] markets, is now going in completely the opposite direction for political reasons,” said Signe Sørensen, an analyst with Danish offshore wind consultancy Aegir Insights. “This could matter a lot to Canada.”
The New England states have been “spearheading the US build-out, procuring lots of offshore wind” as part of former US President Joe Biden’s objective of adding 30,000 MW of production by 2030, she said. “Delays to construction now will have ramifications far beyond Trump’s term.
“These states’ options to meet their clean energy targets with onshore renewables are quite limited,” said Sørensen. “So for this reason, large-scale Canadian offshore wind could come into the picture.”
John Dalton, president of Power Advisory, a US power sector consulting firm, told Canada’s National Observer there was “definitely a case” for future offshore wind production from Atlantic Canada being exported to New England.
“The Trump administration has largely derailed the realization of the [US Northeast’s] electricity market’s clean energy and offshore wind goals,” he said. “States will be pivoting to other resources … with policymakers very focused on securing low [electricity] costs.”
Nova Scotia offshore wind price ‘very favourable’
A price check between power purchase agreements finalized by US states with developers for wind farms now being built off the US — including the multi-billion-dollar Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind off New York and Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, which would together power well over 1 million American homes — and a number of the proposed projects off Nova Scotia compares “very favourably” the Canadian sector.
“The economics of Nova Scotian offshore wind would certainly be competitive with these and future US offshore wind projects,” said Sørensen, though she declined to provide hard ‘levelized cost of energy’ figures – the industry benchmark metric for the cost of a project over its lifetime compared to the revenue generated by purchase power agreements, citing commercial confidentiality.
Aegir CEO Scott Urquhart noted: “Nova Scotia has a huge area of shallow water that could house tens of gigawatts [tens of thousands of megawatts] with excellent economics. Looking at distance to markets, interconnections to the US are not a crazy idea — they’ve been doing similar distances off Europe for years.”
Given the historically high electricity prices in the US Northeast and the fast-rising power demand forecast, Aegir calculations suggest Nova Scotian offshore wind supply could fit well with states’ pursuits of a strategy led by greater diversification of clean energy sources.
Atlantic Canada’s rich wind resource
Winds rush along the coastlines of Canada's Maritime provinces at speeds similar to those off Northern Europe — at roughly 40 km/h — where offshore wind farms have been generating power to the grid for more than 30 years and have led to the development of a sector employing over 300,000 people.
Canada’s Atlantic Economic Council said last year that offshore wind off Nova Scotia could become a $7-billion market by 2030, creating an initial 5,000 jobs amid other benefits for regional economies. Nova Scotia is set to hold its first auction, where waters would be leased to developers to harness a first 5,000 megawatts (MW) of energy, before the end of 2025. The Global Wind Energy Council, an industry body, said in its most recent annual report Canada could add a first 1,000 MW by 2034.
But under the aegis of making Canada an “energy superpower,” Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston has pitched a 40,000 MW project called Wind West as a means of meeting 27 per cent of the country’s total energy demand. Multi-billion-dollar visions of a massive offshore wind-powered transmission trunkline running along North America’s Atlantic coastline are not new. Several long-distance power transmission projects have been considered over the past decade, including the high-profile Atlantic Wind Connection backed by Google, Swiss green-energy private-equity house Good Energies, Japanese industrial conglomerate Marubeni, and Belgian transmission system operator Elia.
The New England-Maritimes Offshore Energy Corridor consortium calculates a 2GW high-voltage, direct current power trunkline running roughly 1,000 km from the Canadian Maritimes to the Gulf of Maine could be built that would deliver “economic and environmental benefits” of up to US$800 million a year.
Comments
Saw an article about offshore wind turbines that float. I'm sure they are smaller and produce less power than fixed, but must be much cheaper to build, install and replace. Also less impact on the seabed and marine life?
Indeed. Floating turbines can actually be very large and produce enormous amounts of power. They can displace a larger number of smaller offshore turbines.
The stars have aligned for Mark Carney to act quickly on this Atlantic clean energy initiative. And he probably has no need to pull the troublesome Bill C-5 out of the toolbox to get it done when cooperation seems to be already in place.
I would urge caution on relying too much on the American market for wind power. Sure, build an HVDC transmission corridor to Maine and beyond, but concentrating on electrifying the East Coast economy and sending clean power west to the rest of Canada first and foremost should be the order of the day.
If Quebec was brought into any trans-provincial and US export market transmission network, we would have one of the largest clean energy blocks in the world.
All the current yammering about pipelines from Alberta seems so archaic by comparison. An Atlantic transmission network renders the concept of an E-W pipeline obsolete. This is especially relevant with Canada's new trade relationship with the EU that brings European wind tech and EVs closer.
While I'm all for renewables, including wind power I read recently that the noise from driving the huge pylons into the seabed to anchor the turbines creates damaging noise levels that destroys sensitive, auditory hair cells in whales, other sea mammals and fish. This makes it impossible for them to echolocate and communicate resulting in beachings, failure to find food, etc. Off shore wind turbines should be floating or gravity based without using pylons for anchorage.
All the more reason to use floating turbines. Their bases ironically use the same tech as floating oil drilling platforms, but at a much smaller scale. Essentially, large diameter steel cylinders are set apart vertically in a drydock on shore and joined together with struts and a platform at the top upon which the turbine tower is bolted. The cylinders are floated and towed out to sea by tugboats, then partially filled with seawater for ballast. The trapped air keeps them afloat. Air can be injected or pumped out to adjust the ballast to the sea conditions. The only contact with the seabed are weights (likely concrete blocks) that are lowered by ship to the seafloor and attached to cables that extend down from the platform (like ship's anchors), and an undersea conductor cable connecting a floating turbine array to shore.
Note that all elements are ultimately recyclable once a turbine reaches its design lifespan and is decommissioned. Using green steel and concrete will offset the majority of embedded emissions, and with a decades-long life of producing zero emission power, these turbines will no doubt become one of the most powerful and effective ways to fight climate change while electrifying the economies they serve.
The politicians need to get on with it without further delay.
I'd humbly suggest that we dedicate electricity produced in Canadian waters first to the Canadian demand, and after that and storage needs are satisfied, sell the excess.
This business of production solely for foreign markets, while our own go begging, is not in the national interest.
Anything else reinforces the demand for environmentally unfriendly fuels ... and those that produce toxic waste (including nuclear) ...