Officials gathered Thursday at the Port of Coeymans to showcase the significant progress of construction work for New York’s largest offshore wind farm.
Groundbreaking took place in July for Sunrise Wind, a 924-megawatt MW offshore wind farm located roughly 30 miles off the coast of Long Island. The project, first announced in 2019, is piloted by Ørsted, the largest energy company in Denmark.
It’s expected to come online in 2026. Officials say once in operation, Sunrise Wind will represent the largest infusion of renewable offshore wind energy from a single project in U.S. history.
President and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Doreen Harris says every resident will benefit from the wind farm project. She adds that 84 platforms comprising more than half of the so- called advanced foundation components for Sunrise Wind are being built at the Coeymans offshore wind hub.
"We have truly a series of gems here in the Capital Region that can and will deliver on this industry and bring the benefits here and beyond at the same time. It is true that this region has the fundamentals to do just that. It it certainly has the expertise, the people, as we see here today, the grit and the determination to deliver, and that's very much what we are here to celebrate," said Harris, who gave a nod to Ørsted for its "significant" investments locally and statewide.
"With over 800 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs, this project is truly a mega project, powering over 600,000 New York homes. So the scale of what you see here today is reflected in the generation from the project that will ultimately be built and deliver right here to New York as well. And this is just the beginning," Harris said.
Ørsted offshore America CEO David Hardy says the advanced foundation components under construction in Coeymans include suspended internal platforms, anode cages and external concrete platforms that comprise the foundations for off-shore wind turbines.
"We're progressing, the Sunrise Wind project in many, many ways, not just here in the port of Coeymans, but we have are approximately 50% completed in our onshore substation out in Long Island," Hardy daid. "We're about 30% completed on the duct bank work on the 18 mile onshore transmission system that goes from where the cable lands to the Holbrook substation in Brookhaven, Long Island. We'll be starting our so called horizontal directional drilling and our near shore cable installation just in the next couple months, in the fall, and we'll be kicking off the foundation installations in the spring, which are being produced as we speak around the world."
Hardy says Ørsted is investing $86 million in Coeymans, and across its portfolio of projects, the company’s putting at least $20 billion into U.S. renewable energy.
Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, says harnessing wind power and growing a clean energy economy will significantly reduce pollution and protect public health.
"It is really nice to see all the momentum that's happening here at the port of Coeymans, because the climate crisis demands that we meet our state's obligations to get clean energy by 2030 and get to 100% clean energy by 2040. And we cannot just talk about it. We can't just pass laws and talk about policy we have to deliver. That's why we know that the NISO has said we're actually going to need more clean energy than even the law says we're calling for getting up to 20 gigawatts of offshore wind, by 2050 which is going to mean a lot more jobs for more foundations like this,"Tighe said.
Officials say they expect the wind industry to create thousands of New York jobs by 2050.
