'Two different countries' | Total-led Attentive wins offshore wind projects on both sides of Hudson
Consortium with Corio and Rise Light leverages members’ global experience to commercialise New York Bight lease, said managing director Damian Bednarz
Both states are reliably Democrat and have put their weight behind the burgeoning energy transition, but “working in New York versus New Jersey, it’s like working in two different countries,” the North Jersey native said.
“You won’t approach the UK the same way you will Germany, they're very different, right?” he said. “The same goes for New York and New Jersey.”
The Total-led Attentive Energy consortium, which includes Corio, Macquarie's offshore wind specialty firm with a 30GW global pipeline, and local energy asset manager Rise Light & Power, won back-to-back awards in New York and New Jersey in recent months.
“We've learned a lot of lessons globally,” he said, that will “increasingly help us and benefit us here in the States.”
New York Attentive 1
“There's a community that's surrounded this plant for decades. And I think they want more than anything is to see a transition to a cleaner, healthier environment,” Bednarz said. “Attentive Energy 1 unlocks that opportunity.”
Ravenswood will become the point of interconnection for the project, leveraging the site's existing 2.5GW of transmission infrastructure and retaining some 100 workers.
Use of Ravenswood also sets the project up for a potential 10% added energy communities' investment tax credit under provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Attentive 1 was awarded a provisional 25-year contract by New York Energy Research and Development Authority (Nyserda), the state regulator of offshore wind, at an estimated $146/MWh with inflation escalators.
Attentive 2 to New Jersey
Its offer to the Garden State was more generalised to include opportunities for small suppliers across the state along with major investments in monopile and tower making.
“There are 21 counties in New Jersey, we connected with every single one” through various business and civic groups, he said.
“Our proposal really does reflect the statewide strategy. That's a big differentiator,” he said. “It takes to account the entire state's opportunity.”
Attentive has pledged some $58.85m to EEW’s Paulsboro monopile manufacturing site in limbo after Orsted – its first customer – cancelled its projects.
It is also committed to sourcing from a local tower manufacturing facility in the New Jersey Wind Port, providing much needed demand for the $350m site, according to the order issued by NJBPU.
Cross-state synergies
Unique requirements in each contract may limit synergies, but Bednarz said, “we're at a point now we're making sure our timelines match up, and make sure that we're having the ability to get synergies through the shared resources.”
Both projects are plugging gaps in capacity that was cancelled in the wake of ongoing economic crisis in the sector and hope to succeed where others failed.
New Jersey is targeting 11GW by 2040 with a total 5.2GW under contract. Following its 4GW round 3 and 1.7GW replacement round 4, New York has some 5.8GW contracted towards its mandate of 9GW by 2035.
Both states employ complicated offshore wind renewable credits (ORECs) in different ways that will result in diverging ratepayer impacts and benefits.
New York’s round three will hit residential users with $2.93 a month, in New Jersey, $6.84, according to orders by the Nyserda and NJBPU.
Local opposition
Unsurprisingly, New Jersey has become a hotbed of sector resistance, albeit mostly due to impacts on viewsheds and the industry’s alleged involvement in a rash of whale deaths mostly in the Mid-Atlantic.
Researchers concur that offshore wind is not involved and that the warmer oceans are driving prey northwards to Southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic, into the teeth of the region’s surge in container vessel traffic.
The potential to derail projects was underestimated by Orsted, who conceded local permitting issues with Cape May County and Ocean City were factors in their decision to pull out of the state.
In the end, the real debate is centred on the New York Bight itself, or rather, its designation as “New York” when five out of six leases are closer to New Jersey.
Bednarz said Attentive shuts down that debate. “We just call it the Bight,” he said.
(Copyright)