Massachusetts Postpones Round 5 Offshore Wind Solicitation

Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) does not expect the Round 5 Request for Proposals (RFP) for offshore wind to be issued until next year, at the earliest, due to uncertainty at the federal level.

In a letter to the state’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU), dated 7 August, DOER noted that it is required under Section 83C of the Green Communities Act to establish a staggered procurement schedule that ensures any subsequent solicitation occurs within 24 months of a previous solicitation, with the previous solicitation, Round 4, launched on 30 August 2023.

However, the contract negotiations between Round 4 winners and the state’s Electric Distribution Companies (EDCs) are not yet completed, with the signing pushed back again, this time until 31 December 2025. In the previous solicitation, Massachusetts selected Ocean Winds’ SouthCoast Wind, Avangrid’s New England Wind 1, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ (CIP) Vineyard Wind 2. CIP later withdrew Vineyard Wind 2 from negotiations.

In June, EDCs notified the Department that Avangrid and SouthCoast Wind had not yet completed their contract negotiations “due to ongoing uncertainty from federal level activities”, and that the developers were now targeting the completion of the negotiations and execution of contracts on or before 31 December.

Challenges arising from the decisions and actions at the federal level are also cited as the reason DOER is now looking to push back the state’s next offshore wind solicitation, together with the Round 4 contracts’ delay.

DOER says in the letter to the DPU that it had issued a Request for Public Comment to potential bidders and public stakeholders, to solicit feedback on, amongst other things, prospective bidders’ intent to bid in Round 5 and a preferred procurement schedule.

The feedback the Department received showed the potential bidders were “overwhelmingly” for moving the Round 5 RFP until 2026 at the earliest due to “federal policy uncertainty such as the Presidential Memorandum halting federal permitting of wind projects, ensuing litigation challenging that Memorandum, availability of the investment tax credit, and tariff uncertainty, as well as ongoing Round IV contract negotiations”.

Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) now does not expect to submit a draft 83C Round 5 RFP, which will contain a proposed timetable and method of solicitation, to the DPU until at least 2026.

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