U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for Vineyard Wind 1, Avangrid informed.
The issuance of the FEIS is the final step before a Record of Decision (ROD) from BOEM, the last approval required for construction on the project to begin. The project is under development by Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP).
The FEIS is a comprehensive study conducted by BOEM to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the proposed project and informs BOEM’s Record of Decision, which will be issued after a 30 day period. With the issuance of the FEIS, Vineyard Wind confirmed that the project remains on track to reach financial close in the second half of 2021 and begin delivering clean energy to Massachusetts in 2023.
Located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Vineyard Wind 1 is slated to become the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the United States. With a generating capacity of 800 megawatts (MW), the project will provide enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes and businesses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, create 3,600 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) job years, reduce electricity rates by $1.4 billion over the first 20 years of operation, and is expected to reduce carbon emissions by more than 1.6 million metric tons per year.
