From concerns about financing to potential impacts on the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale, developers of offshore wind projects had to navigate some rough waters in 2023.
That stormy weather included efforts by companies to renegotiate their contracts with utilities due to rising construction costs, higher inflation and supply chain disruptions, and the war in Ukraine. Those headwinds culminated in some developers deciding to walk away from projects rather than get stuck in money-losing endeavors.
But the winds now seem to be blowing in the renewable energy sector’s favor, including for a pair of wind farms planned for the waters just south of Brunswick County.
Late last year, a 132 megawatt (MW) project off New York’s Long Island became the first offshore wind farm in the country to start sending power onshore. Parts of another wind farm off Massachusetts came online in early January.
Then in late January Duke Energy,…
