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Colin Young | SHNS
Massachusetts will have to wait even longer to find out how much the next round of offshore wind projects could cost.
In September, Massachusetts selected 2,678 megawatts of offshore wind power spread across three projects that submitted bids earlier this year. Those projects are widely expected to cost ratepayers more than previous projects, but price information is withheld from the public until contracts are filed for Department of Public Utilities approval.
The evaluation team negotiating contracts with those projects informed DPU in a letter Thursday that it will not meet Friday's target for finishing contract talks, or the Dec. 18 target date for contract filings. The evaluation team includes the Department of Energy Resources, National Grid, Eversource and Unitil.
"The contracting parties have not yet completed their contract negotiations and are now targeting the completion of negotiations and execution of contracts with all three counterparties on or before January 15, 2025. Accordingly, the Evaluation Team is now targeting the filing of contracts with the Department on or before February 25, 2025," the letter said.
Pricing is clearly a sensitive topic for the industry and its boosters in state government and the Healey administration would only say in September that the projects it helped pick will be cost effective when compared to the cost of building other power generation projects in the future. Development of a robust offshore wind industry is key to Massachusetts' decarbonization commitments and is seen as a sector that could provide an array of new jobs for residents.
The latest delay means contracts would almost certainly be filed with DPU after Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House. The president-elect has long been an antagonist of the wind industry and his first administration dealt a major setback to the still-incomplete Vineyard Wind 1 project here.
This offshore wind procurement process has already been delayed by months. Before at least two other extensions, projects were originally to have been selected to proceed to contract negotiations by June 12 (instead it was Sept. 6), contracts were to be executed by Aug. 14 (it is now targeted for Jan. 15) and were supposed to be submitted to DPU by Sept. 18 (now Feb. 25).
