Will Rhode Island maintain its "first-mover" offshore wind status? That’s The 60 Million Dollar question.

Rhode Island has been headlining the offshore wind industry since it became home to the nation’s first offshore wind farm in 2016. Now, the Ocean State will get another shot at a starring role, with an upcoming ballot measure that could help galvanize the offshore wind sector over the next several decades.

On 2 March, voters will head to the polls in a special election to decide on Question 7, which would authorize the state to issue USD 60m in bonds to fund infrastructure improvements at the Port of Davisville at North Kingstown's Quonset Business Park, along with statewide industrial site investments.

The proposal would help update and expand the port’s facilities and would replicate Quonset’s successful “Site Readiness” initiative statewide. Administered by the Quonset Development Corporation (QDC), funds would be invested in preparing business-ready parcels for manufacturing and other services across Rhode Island.

Managed by the QDC, the 3,200-acre business park is home to more than 200 companies, employing a 12,000-member workforce in full and part-time jobs across a variety of industries. The Port of Davisville, a 200-acre subcomponent of Quonset and the state’s only public port, has made a name for itself as one of the nation's top ten auto importers.

“Most of the investments we’re making at the port are really going into reconstructing the existing infrastructure at the port at Davisville,” Steven King, Managing Director at Quonset Development Corporation, told NPM. “The first immediate thing is to sustain and keep the jobs that the port currently supports. The infrastructure that is here at Quonset Business Park was built by the U.S. Navy in 1941, so you can imagine that it is aging. We are making an effort to rehabilitate the assets that are here--it’s asset protection and the opportunity for new business growth all rolled together. The port supports over 1,650 jobs and generates USD 28m in state and local taxes, so our goal is to hopefully, over time, double that.”

The Port of Davisville stands out as one of the only ports in the country with experience in the construction of offshore wind farms. In 2016, wind turbine components arrived in Rhode Island via the Port of Davisville for the Block Island Wind Farm, including steel jackets to anchor the wind turbines and more than 28 miles of undersea cable. Quonset also served as the principal port for the project’s heavy installation vessels over a two-year span, while Quonset-based companies participated in every aspect of the project’s construction.

In addition, Davisville has served as the port of entry for the component parts of nearly every land-based wind turbine in Rhode Island.

“There are great opportunities off the coast here in New England for additional wind farms, and we see there are several projects underway to get permitted on their way to construction, including the Revolution Wind project that will power Rhode Island," King said. "We want to take advantage of the "first-mover" status we had in the wind industry, having used a lot of the assets to support much of the Block Island wind farm construction. We’re very well-versed in what is needed, so we want to be able to leverage the infrastructure at our port facilities to continue to do that, and to use that as a mechanism to garner the jobs that are related to this new industry.”

A 50/50 partnership between Orsted and Eversource, the 704 MW Revolution wind farm, contracted jointly by Rhode Island (400 MW) and Connecticut (304 MW) utilities in 2018, will be built approximately 15 miles south of Rhode Island’s coast and is expected to launch construction in 2023.

The project is part of Rhode Island's broader goal to achieve a clean energy economy, with Gov. Gina Raimondo calling for the state to become the first in the nation to meet 100 percent of its electricity demand with renewables by 2030.

One of Rhode Island's cornerstone policies for increasing renewable energy in the electricity sector is its Renewable Energy Standard (RES), which will require the state to add about 4,600 GWh of additional renewable energy to close the remaining renewable electricity gap to hit its 2030 target.

Wind in the works

Over the last several years, New England states have signed contracts for 3,100 MW of offshore wind resources. In Rhode Island, National Grid recently initiated a solicitation for up to 600 MW of additional offshore wind, while Massachusetts and Connecticut are targeting an additional 2,800 MW of offshore wind resources by 2035. In total, New England states are seeking more than 6,000 MW of offshore wind resources over the next decade.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has identified leases for future development that can support 15,000 MW of offshore wind resources. As of August 2020, developers had submitted proposals for more than 12,000 MW of offshore wind facilities to ISO-New England to determine the need for system upgrades to connect the new facilities to New England's grid.

“Many of the companies at Quonset will ultimately be involved in the supply chains for the construction of the projects,” King said. “There’s a lot of interest in it. Many of our Quonset companies were involved in the Block Island project."

It was a Quonset company that built the first offshore wind transfer vessel, the Atlantic Pioneer, which currently services the Block Island wind farm. The same company commissioned the Atlantic Endeavor, a crew transfer vessel currently servicing Dominion Energy's 12 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) pilot project off Virginia Beach.

Other ship builders at Quonset have commissioned and built several crew transfer vessels, all fabricated and constructed at the business park.

“There’s a lot of opportunity in ship building and construction contractors,” King said. “We’ve had a lot of engagement with folks that are prospectively bidding on the work, but the industry is a little slow with the federal permitting, so a lot of the procurements aren't done yet. We have talked to many of the developers who have federal lease rights off of New England. We are actively engaged with two, and we are working with them with respect to how they might leverage and grow these facilities at the port to meet their needs for long-term jobs. We see the potential for the operations and maintenance jobs as one of the key components in this. We want the lion’s share of the jobs that operate and maintain the wind farms over the next 25 years, so we’re heavily focused on those efforts.”