|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
NEW BEDFORD — All news about offshore wind inevitably leads many in New Bedford back to the same question: So, will this bring more jobs?
That was true once again last week when three major wind developers submitted project bids that include significant investment into New Bedford’s port.
Projects from Vineyard Offshore and Avangrid, two of the developers, proposed New Bedford as the maintenance hub for wind farms that could eventually power hundreds of thousands of homes. Avangrid’s proposal would also bring a crane manufacturing facility to New Bedford, operated by the Danish company Liftra. It would be the first of its kind in the United States.
Though bids are still subject to negotiation and approval, New Bedford’s waterfront celebrated the announcements and signaled optimism for future employment.
“I think it’s incredibly good news for the port of New Bedford,” said Gordon Carr, executive director of the New Bedford Port Authority. “We’re very pleased with the investment into long-underutilized and brownfield properties.”
Carr said long-lasting jobs in manufacturing and in wind-farm operations and maintenance would make the offshore wind industry a sustainable employer in New Bedford. “The supply chain businesses that you see in more mature ports in Europe will start showing up in New Bedford,” he said. He added that new investment and development is going toward currently “underutilized” properties, meaning that “there’s no displacement of commercial fishing or processing along the waterfront.”
SouthCoast Wind, the third developer that submitted a bid, did not confirm to The Light last week that it still intends to use New Bedford for its staging and construction activities (its plan before canceling a previous bid), but Mayor Jon Mitchell seemed to hold SouthCoast Wind to that commitment in a recent letter.
These latest proposals, according to Carr, are helping local leaders to “visualize what the port could become.” Knowing how developers intend to use New Bedford’s port helps the harbor managers, workforce training organizations, and local businesses “to support this new industry and its integration with our ongoing businesses.”
“It’s clarifying for us to see some of those pieces come together,” he said.
Developers will not share the specific number of forecasted jobs until all bids are jointly approved by Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the three-state partnership that aims to streamline projects and lower costs. But the same researchers who have been tracking offshore wind’s employment are optimistic.
“This is the type of investment we’ve been looking for,” said David Borges, the researcher who has co-authored two studies about Vineyard Wind’s employment in Massachusetts. Borges said the long-term nature and large scale of the proposals demonstrate a level of private investment that New Bedford has not seen in decades.
“Companies are feeling more confident that the pipeline will be there and are setting up operations,” Borges said. The result, he said, will be increases to the local tax base and “new, permanent, and high-paying jobs.”
New Bedford still needs to prioritize local training, hiring
At Bristol Community College, the announced developer proposals nearly coincided with the launch of several new wind training and safety courses at the recently completed National Offshore Wind Institute (NOWI).
“We’re really so excited and energized by… the amount of developers interested in developing power off our coast,” said Jennifer Menard, a vice president for business development. “We work closely with the developers, and we want to be engaged and understand what the workforce needs are.”
To fully benefit from the proposed projects, New Bedford needs to train its residents before the new jobs become available, according to Borges, the researcher who has studied Vineyard Wind’s employment. Borges previously found that only 18% of the waterfront’s union workforce on the current Vineyard Wind 1 project was composed of New Bedford residents.
Carr, of the Port Authority, agreed. “The long term goal is local hires,” he said.
Menard has looked through the proposals, and she said, “These bids help us understand the expansion plan of the industry and the expansion plans of the workforce.”
Menard also shared new developments with The Light, including that recently approved permits for the NOWI mean that Global Wind Organization courses, the international wind training standard, in basic technical training and crane signaling will begin this month. In May, other courses in safety, rescue training, and first aid will launch; by this summer, an underwater helicopter escape training is on track to begin.
All the courses, Menard said, are booked up. “There’s a long list of people looking to come in here,” she said. “It’s a robust field of folks looking for certification across a diverse set of occupational roles.”
Many of the courses at the NOWI are organized by employers, including wind developers who purchase training packages for their workers. But Menard said that individuals in New Bedford will have full access to the courses as well.
“We’ll be able to sign up anybody from the community looking for these trainings,” Menard said. The cost for the GWO Basic Safety training is $2,500 for an individual. If a resident wants to become a wind technician, however, Menard recommended that they find employment and sign up closer to their projected start date.
“We’re the last stop before you go out on a wind farm,” Menard said. Wind-training courses typically have two-year renewals. “So if you find work that starts in September,” Menard said as an example, “go through the certifications in July or August.”
Bristol is also working to help locals with no experience to find their way into the nascent offshore wind industry. Menard mentioned partnerships with MassHire and local campaigns like WindWorks that aim to educate and attract students in middle and high schools.
A local pre-apprenticeship program, Building Pathways South, has also expanded its offerings to include information about the offshore wind industry. And the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Bourne was the first institution in the United States to offer GWO training and safety courses.
Carr, of the Port Authority, described the South Coast’s “incredible first-mover advantage” for offshore wind employment, and credited Bristol’s NOWI as “the first purpose-built offshore wind training facility” in the region.
And the NOWI itself is contributing to new jobs too: five of the institute’s seven staff members are local to New Bedford, according to Menard.
New Bedford is better prepared to weather employment gaps
Mayor Jon Mitchell penned a letter to the state’s Department of Energy Resources (DOER) last Wednesday to comment on the solicitation process. He also shared his concern that New Bedford did not have all the developers’ commitments for marshaling and staging work — the type of work now occurring in the port for Vineyard Wind 1.
Lacking this work, the mayor wrote, threatens “a gap in major activity at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal for two to three years after the Vineyard Wind project is complete.”
The short-term nature of construction projects has always carried the possibility of employment gaps between contracts. But the long-term operations, maintenance, and manufacturing jobs planned for New Bedford mean the city can outlast those gaps, said Jennifer Downing, the executive director of the New Bedford Ocean Cluster.
Downing said that “while certainly there could be negative consequences of no activity at that terminal,” the positive news of long-term investments outweighed these potential gaps: “you don’t see as often companies setting roots in a community to operate long-term.”
With offshore wind here to stay, there could be benefits for adjacent maritime industries: “a lot of blue-collar jobs that are not new to people in New Bedford… welders, fabricators, vessel repair,” Downing said. “We are in a really good position to step into these jobs.”
Moreover, getting ready for the Vineyard Wind 1 project was like “drinking from a fire hose,” Downing said. Gaps between projects could “give us time to start educating the workforce about the opportunity to actually step into these jobs when opportunities are posted.”
However, New Bedford’s waterfront workers are more wary of the road ahead. “We have to fight to make sure we get taken care of,” said Kevin Rose, president of the local longshoremen’s union, ILA Local 1413 — “even though we have been working the New Bedford waterfront since 1936.”
As the proposals are under review, Rose said the longshoremen are “waiting to see who gets the bid like everyone else,” but added that “we will continue to fight for these jobs [like] we usually do.”
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
This is going to change New Bedford so much. Many long-term residents will be driven out by the property value increases and therefore rent increases that are surely coming. Not sure if people will even recognize New Bedford in 10 years.