EGN NEWS DESK
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Elizabeth Yeampierre stood close to the sting of the Brooklyn waterfront earlier this week. A huge concrete lot stretched out earlier than her, riddled with weeds and rain puddles, because the Manhattan skyline sparkled within the distance. For years, Yeampierre has fought to rework this vacant expanse right into a hub for clean-energy industries — one that would carry much-needed jobs to the encompassing neighborhood of Sunset Park.
Now, that’s lastly beginning to occur.
On Monday, building started on an offshore wind facility on the 73-acre lot referred to as the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. Equinor, the Norwegian vitality large, will use the positioning to obtain and ship out the large wind generators that it plans to put in within the Atlantic Ocean. When accomplished in 2026, the ability will probably be one of many largest devoted hubs serving offshore wind, a essential vitality trade that’s slowly rising within the United States.
“It’s a landmark achievement, and it exhibits that we are able to turn into a mannequin of a simply transition,” Yeampierre, the manager director of UPROSE, mentioned throughout a ground-breaking occasion. The grassroots group primarily serves residents in Sunset Park, a largely working-class neighborhood of Asian, Latino, and immigrant communities.
“An industrial sector that has had a lengthy historical past in our communities of poisonous publicity is now taking significantly our imaginative and prescient of a inexperienced reindustrialization,” Yeampierre mentioned.
Later, she clutched a ceremonial shovel alongside New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) and different audio system beneath the blazing solar. Workers right here will assemble and preserve the towers, blades, and parts used for offshore wind installations, beginning with Equinor’s 810-megawatt Empire Wind 1 venture close to Long Island. Subsea cables will join that wind farm to the Brooklyn terminal’s new substation, delivering sufficient clear electrical energy to provide 500,000 houses.
The $250 million venture is anticipated to create over 1,000 union building jobs and apprenticeships, whereas supporting a smaller variety of everlasting roles each on-site and aboard marine vessels that service the East Coast’s rising fleet of towering generators. Community leaders say they’re watching carefully to make sure these jobs truly go to Sunset Park residents as promised.
“We’ve received to be on high of it,” Alexa Avilés, a New York City council member (D) who represents and lives in Sunset Park, instructed Canary Media on the sidelines of the occasion. “Because it’s one thing that would slip by and we glance again and see solely a handful [of local jobs], and that will be a travesty.”
One gust ahead, two blows again
Construction is beginning on the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal throughout what continues to be a roller-coaster trip for the rising U.S. offshore wind trade.
In current years, excessive rates of interest, choked provide chains, and native opposition efforts have significantly delayed or ended offshore wind developments in New York and throughout the Eastern Seaboard. At the identical time, firms proceed to make progress on a handful of milestone initiatives. In March, Ørsted’s 132-MW South Fork Wind Farm formally opened close to Long Island, changing into America’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm.
All instructed, the United States has put in at the least 240 MW of working offshore wind capability off the coasts of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Virginia. That quantities to roughly 1 % of the Biden administration’s purpose of putting in 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by the tip of this decade.
Equinor has hardly been spared from the trade whiplash. In 2019, the developer secured a long-term settlement to ship electrical energy from Empire Wind 1 to New York state. But final 12 months, as rising venture prices threatened to derail the venture, Equinor sought to make inflation-related changes to its contract with the state. Although its first try was unsuccessful, the corporate later secured a new offtake settlement with extra favorable monetary phrases — a deal that was finalized on June 4.
“This has not been a straightforward journey, from the pandemic to geopolitical and financial challenges,” Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables America, mentioned at Monday’s occasion. “But Empire Wind has weathered the ups and downs.”
The curler coaster is definite to spiral even additional if Donald Trump, a staunch wind-energy opponent, is elected president once more in November. For now, nonetheless, President Joe Biden is working to increase the nation’s offshore wind growth, together with by leasing new federal tracts within the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and Gulf of Maine.
