Renewable

January 10 (Renewables Now) - New York will launch in 2020 a second offshore wind solicitation targeting at least 1 GW of capacity but possibly “substantially more”, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced earlier this week in his State of the State Address.

With this solicitation, the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) will aim to take advantage of the rapidly falling cost of offshore wind energy, the governor said. 

In a separate competitive process to be launched this year, NYSERDA, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Empire State Development (ESD) will award USD 200 million (EUR 180m) in public investments in port infrastructure improvements.

In October, New York finalised contracts with the developers of close to 1,700 MW of offshore wind projects to be realised off the state’s coast. These projects include the 880-MW Sunrise wind farm, developed by Ørsted A/S (CPH:ORSTED) and New England utility Eversource Energy (NYSE:ES), and the 816-MW Empire wind project by Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR). These projects, the upcoming solicitation and the growing number of onshore renewable energy projects in the state, support New York's plan to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from power generation by 2040.

In the State of the State Address, governor Cuomo also said that New York will develop a plan for the expanion of the state's transmission capacity in order to ensure clean and renewable power can be transported to areas that need more electricity. As part of that plan, new technologies, like battery storage, will be use to boost the capacity and effectiveness of the system.