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Runaway costs create uncertain future for offshore wind projects in CT, other northeast states

Alexander Soule

As Rhode Island begs developers to step up with proposals for a new offshore wind farm, Connecticut and Massachusetts are next in line — but with the three states and others on the Eastern Seaboard drifting into a market that is stuck in the doldrums.

In a joint letter to the Biden administration in mid-September, Gov. Ned Lamont and other Northeast governors warned the Biden administration of escalating costs that could stall any new wind farm proposals. Blaming inflation and continuing bottlenecks in industrial supply chains that have "created extraordinary economic challenges that threaten to reverse these offshore wind gains," the governors want more support to be steered to wind power under the Inflation Reduction Act to help cover the jump in wind farm costs.

"These pressures are affecting not only procurements of new offshore wind but, critically, previously procured projects already in the pipeline," the governors stated in the joint letter. "Absent intervention, these near-term projects are increasingly at risk of failing."

The governors' plea came two weeks after Orsted warned investors it expected to incur $700 million in lower long-term profits. That is the result of runaway costs for the Revolution Wind farm that will generate electricity for Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as for wind farms slated for New York and New Jersey. 

On an Aug. 30 conference call, Orsted executives added costs could double again if the company is unable to qualify for additional federal tax credits it has been seeking in connection with U.S. wind farm construction, and balloon further if interest rates remain high. Eversource had already signaled its intent to find a buyer for its share of the Revolution Wind project as an original co-investor alongside Orsted.

CEO Joe Nolan told investors in early August that turbine pre-assembly work was under way in New London, and that Eversource was at "the one-yard line," in his words, to completing a transaction for its stake in Revolution Wind. The company sold its remaining offshore wind leases last May to Orsted for $625 million, while pushing ahead with South Fork Wind and Sunrise Wind for New York.

"The expected spending and 'in-service' dates have not changed for the three offshore wind projects," Nolan said. "Our offshore wind leases are very, very prized assets — they sit in an area that have all the fundamentals necessary to deliver great wind speeds."

By month's end, however, Orsted was warning that delays by the company supplying foundations for the Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind farms would force it to take a large charge against earnings.

Despite the financial hit and continuing uncertainty over costs, Orsted Group CEO Mads Nipper said it made sense to see Revolution Wind through completion, given the investments it has already made, which include upgrades to the State Pier in New London that Eversource and the state of Connecticut helped underwrite. Orsted has invested more than $4 billion to date in U.S. wind farm development.

"Is it tempting to say, 'couldn’t we just walk away?'" Nipper told investors in August. "The level of sunk cost just means that it is the financially rational decision to stay in these projects."

Avangrid, the Orange-based developer of the Park City Wind project that eyes Bridgeport as its base of construction operations, announced on Wednesday the sale of $100 million in tax credits for existing wind farms it operates, under an Inflation Reduction Act provision that greases the wheels for such transactions.

Rhode Island, which has the most aggressive deadline of any state for 100 percent renewable power by 2033, is moving full steam ahead, issuing on Thursday a request for proposals to install 1.2 gigawatts of new offshore wind farm capacity. Orsted built the Block Island Wind Farm that supplies the Rhode Island community as the first offshore wind farm in America. Dominion Energy, owner of the Millstone Power Station nuclear plant in Waterford, owns the only other one currently operating, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, which it hopes to expand from an initial trial size.

With no immediate outlook for industry costs ebbing, Connecticut, Rhode Island and other states may have a lengthy wait on its hands to get any developers to step up if the Biden administration does not free up funding. 

Last year, the Connecticut General Assembly set into law a 2040 goal previously articulated by Lamont for the state's electric grid to achieve zero carbon emissions, phasing out or offsetting polluting power plants in favor of solar, wind and other electric generation and storage technologies.

"These targets reflect what’s necessary and urgently needed to address climate change, which is impacting our communities more severely with every passing year," stated Katie Dykes, commissioner of DEEP, in a statement forwarded by a DEEP spokesperson Friday in response to a CT Insider query. "We are working hard on solutions to ensure continued deployment of offshore wind and other clean energy resources needed to meet the 2040 target and we remain confident in our ability to achieve that target."

Avangrid's Spain-based parent Iberdrola Group estimates it takes seven to 11 years to build an offshore wind farm, including approvals in the permitting process. That would give Connecticut wiggle room to wait out better market dynamics, but render Rhode Island's 2033 deadline looming very large.

Offshore wind is critical for New England states to hit those goals for renewable power and carbon-emission reductions, according to Amanda Barker, a Rhode Island-based analyst for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, who addressed the topic during a mid-September forum on offshore wind farms sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts.

"New England is uniquely very well positioned to harness the full potential of offshore wind — we have a densely populated coast with very high energy demand," Barker said. "We have shallow waters on our continental shelf which is ideal for installing the turbines. We also have really strong winds right off our coast — stronger than almost anywhere in the world, and they're especially strong during the winter which works really well as we start to transition to heat pumps and require more electricity in the winter time."

But wind farms, nevertheless, produce variable output as is the case with solar panels, requiring the continued operation of traditional power plants to pick up the slack on days when output plunges. Policymakers in Connecticut and elsewhere are eyeing battery storage farms to store power as well, which could inject electricity onto the grid during calmer days.

In a tally of power generator output published by ISO New England, the fluctuating outputs from wind and solar are on daily display, ranging from March 30 when power from solar panels and land-based wind turbines totaled nearly 45 megawatts of power, to a slow day in early January when output fell well short of two megawatts. 

For now, Revolution Wind will provide the earliest window into the state of the offshore wind market for New England. In August, Orsted executives cited  delays at a Texas shipyard in the construction of a large ship designed for offshore wind turbine construction, as well as slower-than-expected completion of wind turbine foundations that are being shipped from Bladt Industries in Denmark.

"We’re basically on track from a project schedule standpoint — it’s just creating increased cost to try to maintain the project schedule," said David Hardy, the Boston-based CEO of Orsted's U.S. operations, speaking at the end of August. "It’s not super valuable for us to speculate how much worse it could be. There’s so many things that could go right, and there’s obviously things that could continue to go wrong."

Long-awaited housing, retail project expected to solve Middletown's parking woes

Cassandra Day

MIDDLETOWN — Plans for a block-sized housing, retail, event space and parking development in downtown Middletown intended to reconnect Main Street to Harbor Park and the Connecticut River, as well as solve the city’s parking problem, is in the formative stages.

The city has contracted with Spectra Construction & Development Corp. of Hartford on a project to build a complex called the Village at Riverside, which would be located on property bordered by Court and Main streets, and deKoven and Dingwall drives. 

Members of the city’s Economic Development Commission heard from several individuals involved in the project at their Sept. 21 meeting.

Mayor Ben Florsheim characterized the project as one that was “long-hoped-for, long-fantasized, and rarely conceived in reality,” according to the meeting video. 

"It's hard to overstate the impact this project is going to have on our community," he added. "It's something that addresses a number of significant needs that the community has been expressing and talking about for a long time."

The east side of the development will be built on deKoven Drive, parallel to Route 9 and the Connecticut River. 

The public-private partnership calls for the creation of 277 market-rate apartments, and small town homes, a public gathering place, two to three levels of underground parking, and retail shops spread out over several buildings on a 228,000-square-foot lot behind the police station.

Florsheim called the preliminary design “the end of the beginning.”

This is the third time in a decade that the project has been presented, General Counsel Brig Smith said. The prior two iterations were both “close, but not quite,” he told members, adding that he hopes that “the third time is the charm.”

The city’s former multi-level parking arcade, located behind Middletown Superior Court on Court Street, was demolished some eight years ago because it posed hazards that arose from the nearly 50-year-old structure. 

The majority of the garage’s lower level was closed to the public in December 2013.

The garage will have pedestrian plaza on top with townhouses on Dingwall Drive and mixed-use building on deKoven Drive.

The project area, Florsheim said, is a “crucial location for the city, state and region.”

When Route 9 was built in Middletown decades ago, it effectively cut off direct access to the Connecticut Riverfront from the neighborhoods and businesses once situated close to the waterway.

The plan will “correct a lot of mistakes the [state Department of Transportation] made in creating a state highway in between downtown and the riverfront,” Florsheim said.

The project will provide hundreds of new parking spaces for the downtown “that is continuing to grow month in and month out, year in and year out,” the mayor told commission members.

It will "transform what was previously an eyesore of a parking lot to a significant public space; a new public facility right in the heart of downtown Middletown," Florsheim added. 

The center portion, around which the buildings will be constructed, would contain a public plaza that will provide access to the future walkway over Route 9.

"Almost importantly — if not more so — it will create a space in the center of downtown that will allow the public to gather, have events, and experience what we have to offer as a city,” the mayor said.

It also has the potential to "significantly" increase the tax base, as well as satisfy the demand for new rental properties downtown at a variety of price points, he added. 

Illustrations presented by Laura Crosskey, president of Hartford-based Crosskey Architects, show water features, picnic tables, a keyhole view of the riverfront which will lead to the bridge to Harbor Park, and more.

The largest building, parallel to the river, would be nine stories high with six stories at the plaza level. There will also be two three-story and one five-story building, Crosskey said.

Additional bore testing on the site conducted by Geo Design engineers determined that there would be no “significant impact to the soil or groundwater,” according to VHB Director of Environmental Services for Connecticut Amy Vaillencourt, who has worked with the city on numerous projects. 

“It’s rare to say that," Vaillencourt said, adding that as a result, remediation won’t be necessary.

The mayor stressed that the presentation is not a final draft. Officials are looking for public input on the plan as the project moves along, he said.

More information is expected to be presented at the Oct. 10 meeting. To view the Sept. 21 meeting video, visit bit.ly/467COG7.

Gardens, dancing and Zumba: New London residents create their community center wish list

John Penney

New London ― After 30 years of talk, the city is well on its way to opening a new community center.

And while the facility is expected to come with all the bells and whistles a $40 million price tag could be expected to offer, former Recreation Department Director Tommie Major wants to keep the project in perspective.

“A building doesn’t make a recreation department,” he said on Friday. “It will definitely be an asset, but a community doesn’t have to have a community center.”

Despite the opening of the center still more than a year away, city residents and groups are already chiming in on what programs and amenities they want to see offered at the facility.

The city’s Recreation Department recently completed a needs assessment for the center using a $90,000 grant from the National Recreation and Park Association. The survey was aimed at highlighting programming that meets the social, cultural, economic, emotional, physical, environmental and intellectual needs of its users, Recreation Director Josh Posey said.

“We know we can’t have all the programming people requested, but we can start the process of implementing some of them now with the goal of having them ready when the doors open,” he said. “While we know the layout we’ll have, we don’t yet know how exactly we’ll use the specific spaces.”

Consolidating a patchwork of programming

For decades, the recreation department worked with school and community officials to conduct programming at a variety of sites, including the former Richard R. Martin Center on Broad Street.

The Martin Center, owned by the city until 2020, had been an unofficial recreation center of sorts for the city with a gymnasium, auditorium and offices that housed the Recreation Department. Programs had been in decline in recent years and the city abandoned its offices at the building in 2019 due to deteriorating conditions.

Major said the city’s relationship to recreation is somewhat oxymoronic.

“We’re in a city surrounded by water, but there’s no indoor pool ― we had a swimming program we had to hold at Avery Point,” he said, referring to the University of Connecticut campus in Groton. “We’re a community with a long history of athletics, but lack the facilities we need to support that. We have an education system that works to motivate students, but the high school has one gym.”

The new center is expected to fill some of those needs gaps. The facility will include a community lounge, classroom space for early childhood programming, a two-court gymnasium, eight-lane pool, track area and workout and game rooms.

But the specific types of programming to be offered are still up in the air, though recreation officials hope the recently completed wellness study will provide some direction.

Zumba, poetry and swimming

The most requested center programming revolving around physical fitness included swim lessons, yoga, basketball, Zumba classes, water aerobics and strength and conditioning, along with walking, biking and open swim programming.

Board games, book clubs, arts and craft, billiards and dances were listed as social wellness program wants, as were movie nights, poetry clubs and card games. Under the educational enrichment umbrella, professional skills training, financial literacy, language and career-building options were forwarded for consideration.

Other programming mentioned included pottery, drawing and cake decorating classes.

A substantial segment of the surveys focused on nutrition and food resource access. Participants said they wanted free community gardens, fruit trees and farmers’ markets at the site. More than half the respondents said they wanted public snack beds added to the center’s property.

Posey said the property doesn’t lend itself to most of the food-based suggestions, though there will likely be grant money left over for snack bed construction.

“We anticipate the center’s programming will evolve over time,” Posey said. “We’ll add, remove or modify activities as we go along. And this survey gives us a list of new possibilities to cycle through.”

The survey results will be discussed with the public at 6 p.m. Tuesday and 7 p.m. Thursday at the Early Childhood Center at BP Learned Mission, 40 Shaw St.

The challenge of non-drivers getting to and from the new community center was also raised during the survey with one recommendation calling for partnering with the school system to ferry youngsters to the center after classes end.

What about seniors?

Inside the New London Senior Center’s sewing room on Thursday, Cheryl Lawrence and Marilyn DeShields bent over swatches of fabric near idling sewing machines.

Lawrence said not consolidating the senior center into the community center represented a missed opportunity, especially since several types programming proposed for the new facility already exist at the Brainard Street center.

She said the new center must put the same premium on senior activities as those aimed at younger visitors.

“For instance, senior swim lessons and specific open pool time in the morning and evenings so people can be bused there from the senior center and also drive there at night if they still work,” she said.

DeShields, who’d begun hearing rumblings of an incoming recreation center a few years ago, called the idea a “great” one – with caveats.

“Give us the opportunity to swim or walk around the perimeter without the youngsters around,” she said. “And have trainers there to help us with exercises and strengthening work. We should not be forgotten.”

Reaching out to the overlooked

More than 20 organizations, including churches, sports associations, health agencies and education centers, hosted in-house focus group meetings from December 2022 to January that sought to ensure historically disenfranchised populations ― people of color, low-income, disabled and LGBTQ+ demographics ― had a voice in their community center’s offerings.

The largest number of focus group’s 388 participants – 34% ― were white, with Hispanic residents making up the second-highest contingent with 33% participating. Just more than 20% of the focus group were Black residents.

Eighty-two participants identified as having a physical, ambulatory or cognitive disability.

The average age of focus group participants was 37, though that figure was based on median household age data filled out by parents. Project Coordinator Andria Fraser said several of the informational-gathering groups consisted of younger residents, including those hosted by the New London Board of Education and the Drop-In Community Center.

“For teens and younger residents, they wanted to see theater and art programming offered at the center, while their parents were looking for homework help,” she said.

Posey said he was pleasantly surprised to see the demographics of the focus group participants dovetail so closely with a 2020 decennial census of the city’s population.

“It’s nice to see that we’re hitting those targets,” he said.

While the city’s recreation department is expected to run some programming at the site, general oversight and operation of the facility will be the responsibility of a private company the city will hire. The hiring process is expected to begin by the end of this year.

The facility is expected to cost $2 million a year to run with revenue generated by memberships, rental fees and sponsorships.

Accelerated bridge construction to cause delays on I-95 this fall

Taylor Hartz

Accelerated construction on a bridge in Westport is expected to cause significant delays on Interstate 95 this fall, according to the state Department of Transportation.

The construction will be done on a bridge over Saugatuk Avenue on I-95 near exit 17 in Westport.

The first lateral slide begins on the northbound side of the I-95 bridge over Saugatuk Avenue on Oct. 20 at 8 p.m. and is expected to be completed by 6 a.m. on Oct. 23, the DOT said.

The second lateral slide begins on the southbound side of the I-95 bridge over Naugatuck at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 and is expected to be finished by 6 a.m. on Nov. 6.

The lateral slide “will severely restrict traffic to two lanes in each [direction] on I-95 on both of those weekends,” officials said.

New Merritt-Route 7 Interchange Plan Backed by Conservation Group

Sophia Muce

NORWALK – After a nearly 20-year standstill, local preservationists and transportation planners have agreed on a fix for what’s been called the “most dangerous” section of the Merritt Parkway.

Interchanges 39 and 40 – which are supposed to connect the Merritt to Route 7 – currently redirect drivers onto congested Norwalk streets, as they are missing key connections. 

Due to traffic spillover onto city streets, sharp curves and steep grade changes on the exit ramps, the number of car accidents at Intersection 40 far surpasses those on nearby intersections – with 365 crashes reported between 2015 and 2018, compared to 241 at a Fairfield intersection, 222 in Westport and 220 in Darien during the same period.

“It is the most dangerous interchange,” said Wes Haynes, executive director of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy. “It’s a very tight exit system as it exists right now.”

Haynes told CT Examiner that the conservancy, a group working to balance preserving the history and character of the Merritt while ensuring it remains functional, has longed for improvements to the interchange. But without suitable alternatives offered by the state Department of Transportation or the Federal Highway Administration, he said they’ve refused to back any proposed plans. The group even filed a lawsuit against the organizations in 2005, stopping construction of a previous plan.

But the standstill came to an end when transportation planners introduced Alternative 26 last month, which Haynes said the conservancy is in “very strong support of.”

The new plan would add the missing connections between the Merritt and Route 7, improve local roadways by widening sidewalks and adding new traffic signals, and remove the steep, curvy ramps. Preliminary construction cost estimates are about $109 million, and the project is expected to be completed around 2027 or 2028.

But the main reason the conservancy backs the plan, Haynes said, is because it’s half the size of the original plan and the 25 subsequent alternatives.

“Because of the reduced size of [Alternative] 26, it scored much higher in terms of wetland impact, open space impact and a whole other group of environmental concerns,” he said. “And it provides a much larger opportunity to do very park-like landscaping around it because there’s just much more green space and less hard space from the construction.”

Stuck at an impasse

In addition to the size, Haynes said the DOT and FHWA’s process this time around has been staunchly different from their 2005 plan, which proposed new overpasses, lengthy exit ramps and the demolition of four historic bridges.

Because the Merritt is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the National Historic Preservation Act requires transportation planners to engage the public when planning significant construction to it. But the state DOT and FHWA violated the act in 2005 and started construction without any public hearings.

“They had basically ignored the process that the federal government had put in place for national register resources when federal funds are being used to modify them,” Haynes said.

Soon after construction started, the conservancy and other local preservationists sued the agencies and won. The groups were then required to fix damage they had done to a historic bridge, and the judge asked the parties to work together to expedite new plans for the interchange.

If the state had listened to the conservancy’s pleas for a smaller, greener plan, Haynes asserted, the interchange could have been fixed years ago. 

“If DOT had maybe yielded a little bit early on in the process, we could have gotten to this point faster,” he said. “But they didn’t, and we held firm, and we eventually got something that will be an asset to the parkway.”

The loss of a bridge

Because the new plan is federally funded, the FHWA was required to study the environmental, social and economic impacts on the surrounding communities through an environmental assessment. The study, published last May, found that Alternative 26 would improve traffic operations, benefit pedestrians and bicyclists and minimize harm to wetlands and wildlife habitats. 

While the plan has far fewer negative impacts than the previous alternatives, Haynes said there is one downside – the loss of a historical bridge built in 1938.

The bridge runs across Main Avenue in Norwalk and is one of three stone-faced bridges along the parkway. The 2005 lawsuit was filed in the middle of the bridge’s original demolition, and the judge ordered the DOT to repair the damage. But in order to carry out the interchange improvements, the new plan calls for yet another demolition.

While the conservancy has protected the Main Avenue bridge throughout the construction planning process, Haynes said the group has prepared for its inevitable demolition.

“We knew all along that for them to put this new interchange in, we would have to lose the bridge,” he said. 

Still, Haynes said the conservancy is glad to be a part of the design process for the replacement bridge, which will include a wider road above and safe pedestrian access underneath.

“In the long term, we will end up with an improved traffic flow at a very urban point – the most urban point – on the parkway, and we felt that was a special case and we could allow for the loss of the bridge under those circumstances,” Haynes added.

He said the loss of the bridge will also be mitigated by a new geocoded website that allows users to pinpoint areas along the parkway and learn about past, present and future work to be done there.