The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is expected to soon announce its decision on whether to approve the Revolution Wind offshore wind farm as the federal agency has now completed the environmental analysis of the project, which Ørsted and Eversource plan to build offshore Rhode Island.BOEM has now issued the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the project, which will be published in the Federal Register on 21 July, and plans to issue a Record of Decision (ROD) on whether to approve, approve with modification, or disapprove Revolution Wind this summer.
The FEIS analyses the potential environmental impacts of the activities laid out in the project’s Construction and Operations Plan (COP), in which Ørsted and Eversource are proposing to build an 880 MW offshore wind farm approximately 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island.
Revolution Wind already has power purchase agreements (PPAs) in place for 704 MW of its capacity, one for 400 MW with the State of Rhode Island and two for a total of 304 MW with the State of Connecticut.
BOEM started the environmental review in the spring of 2021 and published the project’s Draft EIS in the Federal Register on 2 September 2022.
This had opened a 45-day public comment period, during which the federal agency received a total of 124 comments from Federal, Tribal, state, and local government agencies; non-governmental organizations; and the public that informed the preparation of the Final EIS.
“Specifically in response to comments received, BOEM developed a preferred alternative that includes fewer turbines to reduce impacts to visual resources and benthic habitat, allows for ocean co-use, and meet the energy needs of Rhode Island”, BOEM stated in a press release issued on 17 July.
Under Alternative F in the FEIS, BOEM could select that the developer installs wind turbines of a higher capacity than proposed in the project’s COP.
For this alternative, BOEM has explored the technology on the market and its availability once Revolution Wind enters construction and has identified 14 MW turbines as the highest capacity turbines that would be commercially available in time, and which fall within the physical design parameters of the project design envelope.
Ørsted and Eversource have already selected the model in October 2021, when they placed an order with Siemens Gamesa for both the South Fork Wind project, now under construction off New York, and Revolution Wind.
