News & Insights
Joel Johnston in NPM - Does Vineyard Wind's Approval Signal a True Paradigm Shift for U.S. Offshore Wind?
New Project Media
11 May 2021. That’s the day the Department of Interior announced the long-awaited final approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 project, now officially on track to become the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S.
Approval of the 800 MW offshore wind project, to be built approximately 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, has been touted as a watershed moment for the nation’s offshore wind sector, and the repositioning of the U.S. as a major player in the trillion-dollar global offshore industry.
But can the momentum be sustained?
“I think maybe it’s a little too early to tell whether this becomes the true paradigm shift, but I think the momentum that we’re seeing in the moment--and it really comes out of the change in administration and the focus that they've had on decarbonization--seems to me to be pretty sustained,” Joel Johnston, an attorney with Hall Estill, told NPM. “One of the biggest hurdles that wind developers have faced, aside from NIMBY and technology issues, has been this federal permitting issue. And given that we’re now seeing BOEM move forward and start approving some of these, I think that it has the very real prospect of not being an overstatement.” READ MORE HERE
