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It’s Groundhog Day for New York’s Offshore Wind Industry

Equinor and Orsted and Eversource won the new, more expensive contracts.

02/29/2024

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

New York’s offshore wind industry is back, or at least back in contract. Two offshore wind projects, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind, were awarded, respectively, to developers Equinor and the partnership of Orsted and Eversource. These two projects, which would amount to 1,700 megawatts of capacity in total (enough to power about a million homes, according to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office), had first been bid out in 2019 and then rebid when these same developers were unable to renegotiate their contracts to deal with rising material and interest rate costs.

Last year was an annus horribilis for the offshore wind industry, with projects cancelled up and down the East Coast and billions of dollars of losses for offshore wind developers. The delayed and cancelled projects have called into question the viability of the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

This year, however, has seen some signs of recovery. For years, the U.S. offshore wind industry was a bunch of plans and a few dozen megawatts of capacity from wind farms off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. Then came Vineyard Wind 1, off the coast of Massachusetts, which started delivering power early this year, shortly after another New York project, South Fork Wind, started up in December of last year.

But merely (re-)awarding the contracts does not ensure that steel goes into the water, let alone that electrons flow into homes. Sunrise Wind will likely be completed in 2026, according to Orsted. Before that the Danish company has to hammer out the details of a new contract, and only then finally decide whether to go through with the thing or not; that’s expected to happen sometime in the second quarter of this year, with federal permitting finished in the summer. Empire Wind 1 has a similar timeline.

According to the governor’s office, utility customers will feel these contracts to the tune of an extra $2 a month. When the projects were first bid out in 2019, the expected impact on utility bills was just $0.73.

Green

Matthew Zeitlin

Matthew is a correspondent at Heatmap. Previously he was an economics reporter at Grid, where he covered macroeconomics and energy, and a business reporter at BuzzFeed News, where he covered finance. He has written for The New York Times, the Guardian, Barron's, and New York Magazine.

Sparks

Microsoft Sustainability Chief Hounded by Protestors at Seattle Climate Week

“Microsoft, you can’t hide, we can see your dirty side!”

Katie Brigham •

07/17/2026

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Katie Brigham

Protestors interrupted one of the final sessions of PNW Climate Week — a conference that brings together climate leaders across Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia — objecting to Microsoft’s rising carbon emissions from data centers and partnerships with oil and gas companies. The company’s Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa was having a one on one conversation with GeekWire climate reporter Lisa Stiffler at Seattle’s City Hall when protestors carrying signs reading “Microsoft’s AI pollutes” and other slogans began shouting from the audience.

I was there, having just moderated the prior panel on how to finance Washington’s clean energy ambitions. Early on there were some rumblings in the crowd from up front. “Climate leaders don’t build gas pipelines in Moses Lake,” was the first objection I heard clearly. It came shortly after Nakagawa kicked off the conversation by highlighting Microsoft’s partnership with sustainable aviation fuel startup Twelve, which recently opened its first commercial-scale SAF plant in Moses Lake, Washington. The tech giant has supported the project through a strategic investment from its Climate Innovation Fund, as well as an offtake agreement for the fuel that will help offset its emissions from employee travel.

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It’s Groundhog Day for New York’s Offshore Wind Industry

Equinor and Orsted and Eversource won the new, more expensive contracts.

You’re out of free articles.

Microsoft Sustainability Chief Hounded by Protestors at Seattle Climate Week

“Microsoft, you can’t hide, we can see your dirty side!”

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