State plans energy innovation center in New Bedford

A state agency has announced plans for a New Bedford waterfront site for wind-energy innovation, testing new technologies, cultivating business enterprises — a project building on years of work to establish the city as an activity center in offshore wind power.  

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has taken a key step in the project scheduled to be completed by July 2026 by launching a search for a building that would enclose nearly an acre of space less than a quarter mile from the waterfront. To fit the relatively tight schedule, the agency wants to find an existing building, or a site with permits and plans either completed or close to it. 

“This is a missing piece” in the bid to make New Bedford a center of offshore wind development, said Mayor Jon Mitchell. “We’re excited about this. This is a good start.”

Mitchell — who has led an eight-year effort to develop an offshore wind industry in New Bedford — said he suggested the city as a location for such a center in the fall of 2021, as the CEC was pursuing a project grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The grant fell through, Mitchell said, but the quest continued for a so-called Ocean Renewable Energy Innovation Center. 

Bruce Carlisle, CEC managing director of offshore wind, said New Bedford is “emerging as a new hub of offshore wind activity,” and so it made sense as a location for this center. He said the center will bolster the city’s position in the industry, and be an important part of the state’s effort to meet its goals of reducing carbon emissions to curb climate change. 

The CEC in December released a 100-page report on the purpose of the project in the context of the offshore wind industry. Now, working with Colliers, a Boston-based commercial real estate company, the agency is asking for initial information on a location. 

The report emphasized that innovation in technologies and materials used in offshore wind power has played a significant role in reducing the cost and expanding overall generating capacity, and has been moving quickly. Driven in part by innovation, total world offshore wind generating capacity has grown from 3 gigawatts in 2010 to 56 in 2020, the report says. 

One gigawatt, or a billion watts, is estimated to be enough to power about 700,000 homes for a year. 

Wind power development involves an array of players: research institutions, small and large manufacturers, suppliers, developers, government agencies. Along with serving as a testing ground for new gear and materials as they’re developed, the ORE is meant to provide a place where these actors can meet, where new businesses related to wind power can be created.

“It kind of brings the pieces together,” said Jennifer Downing, executive director of the New Bedford Ocean Cluster, a nonprofit organization that took part in developing the ORE proposal. The Cluster launched more than two years ago to support ocean-related industries, including aquaculture, commercial fishing and seafood processing, offshore wind, and technological innovation for all these enterprises.

“I think there’s a need for increased facilities and support and programming” in offshore wind, she said. Even as much work can be done through online connections, she said a physical space matters.

“Doing face-to-face business and in-person networking will remain essential to the success of entrepreneurs and small-midsize companies, and to the commercialization of technology,” which will be a focus of the ORE center, Downing said. By providing an ocean-based testing ground, the center will help “entrepreneurs scale ideas and move products through the often expensive and time-consuming phase of prototyping and testing.”

Both Mitchell and Carlisle mentioned the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult in the United Kingdom as a potential model for what this center in New Bedford could be doing. If the New Bedford site is doing that kind of work in five to 10 years, it would be a success, Carlisle said. 

The Catapult web site shows that the operation, established in 2013, has built more robust supply chains for the industry, and has worked on everything from turbine blade design, to robotics for maintenance, cable systems, improving communications to ensure worker safety in remote field locations and reducing the cost of producing wind and tidal energy. 

New Bedford is now the staging ground for the Vineyard Wind 1 project, the United States’ first commercial wind farm being built about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The farm is designed to include 61 turbines producing 800,000 megawatts, or about enough to power 400,000 homes. 

On a sunny late afternoon last May, the first turbine parts arrived at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal from Portugal aboard a heavy-load carrier nearly 500 feet long. 

The moment was a milestone in efforts to develop the Port of New Bedford for offshore wind operations that began about eight years ago, involving about $1 billion in city, state, federal and private investment, including removing polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB contamination, from the harbor after decades of industrial dumping.

The ORE Innovation Center is expected to cost $10 million to develop and open, a sum to be drawn from federal funds allocated under the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA, according to the CEC report. 

Carlisle estimates that the center will cost about $1.5 million a year to operate, likely supported by a mix of federal funds, corporate sponsorships, lease payments from main tenants. 

Under the CEC plan, the center would measure 37,000 square feet — just over a third the size of a typical Home Depot store — with room for workshops, fabrication spaces, meeting rooms, and offices. 

Carlisle said it’s too early to say just how many people would be working there at any given time, but he said the space is meant to eventually accommodate six to 12 startup companies and five to eight industry partners. 

For easy access to the water, the place is to stand no more than a quarter mile from the waterfront. 

The agency wants to see final location proposals by the end of March, to choose a spot in May and to have the place ready to open no later than the end of July 2026. 

The broad idea, Carlisle said, is to make the center part of the state’s “leaning into strategies” to make it a leader in technical innovation in offshore wind to make this source of power less expensive, more reliable and safer.

Email Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.