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Dive brief:
- The Office of Ocean Energy Management gave the green light to the 2.6 GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, or CVOW, project on Tuesday. The project will be built 23.5 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach by Dominion Energy.
- CVOW is the fifth project and the largest offshore wind farm to receive a Record of Favorable Decision from BOEM.
- Rising costs have pushed other US offshore wind developers to cancel their power purchase agreements, but Dominion Energy says it has secured fixed-cost contracts for the vast majority of critical expenses for upon completion of CVOW.
Diving knowledge:
Dominion Energy’s CVOW project is scheduled to be completed on schedule and on budget, according to company spokesman Jeremy Slayton.
BOEM’s favorable decision Tuesday clears the way for Dominion Energy to begin onshore construction of the project, Slayton said, although offshore construction will have to await BOEM’s final approval of the project’s construction and operation plan , scheduled for January 29. the first eight monopile foundations arrived at the project site at Virginia’s Portsmouth Marine Terminal just days before Tuesday’s announcement.
Construction should begin in earnest in early 2024, Slayton said, and is slated to finish in 2026, with some turbines possibly starting to produce power in late 2025.
“We got this lease back in 2013, so this is something we’ve been working on for over a decade and today is a huge milestone for the team,” Slayton said. Keeping the project on time and on budget, he said, “is a good thing for Dominion Energy, a good thing for our customers, a good thing for Virginia and a good thing for offshore wind. It shows that the “offshore wind is important and vital to the future of clean energy.”
Will Cleveland, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted that the Virginia State Corporation Commission took steps early in the process to ensure that if the CVOW project experienced cost overruns or delays, those costs additional costs would fall to Dominion Energy shareholders rather than customers, giving the company an additional incentive to keep the project going. The commission, Slayton said, also required Dominion to close contracts in 2020 and 2021 in order for the project to get its full approval.
Cleveland praised Dominion’s commitment to fulfilling those obligations, as well as its commitment to mitigating the project’s potential wildlife impacts.
“The goal is for this to be the model for how we can develop offshore wind in the United States in a cost-effective and environmentally responsible way,” Cleveland said.
While Dominion Energy’s current integrated resource plan calls for the construction of a second offshore wind farm of similar size, Slayton said CVOW is, for now, the only offshore wind project the company is actively developing.
