WILMINGTON, Del. – Deepwater Wind, the wind-energy company picked by the Carcieri administration to build the state’s first offshore wind farm, has poached a top executive from rival firm Bluewater Wind.
James S. Lanard, Bluewater’s head of strategic planning, will join Deepwater this week as a managing director, Deepwater spokesman Jon Duffy confirmed to Providence Business News this morning. Both companies are based in Hoboken, N.J., and have offices in Rhode Island.
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Lanard’s arrival coincides with an overhaul of the management structure at Deepwater, which has been without a permanent chief executive since its first CEO left the company last fall.
Lanard will be one of three managing directors who will lead the company and report directly to Deepwater’s board of directors, Duffy said. Chris Wissemann, the company’s chief operating officer and acting CEO, also will be a managing director, and the third will be named soon, Duffy said. More details on the management changes are expected to be released this week.
Last September, the Carcieri administration picked Deepwater over Bluewater and other contenders as the preferred developer of a utility-scale wind farm off Rhode Island’s coast. However, Bluewater has continued to pursue its project.
Lanard’s defection comes amid turmoil at Bluewater’s parent company, the Australian investment bank Babcock & Brown, which collapsed last month and is preparing to sell Bluewater and its other subsidiaries to pay off creditors.
Lanard’s decision was first reported by The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., which described him as “one of the most visible figures in [Bluewater’s] effort to develop a wind farm off the coast of Rehoboth Beach” in southeast Delaware.
Lanard told The News Journal that he is “leaving [Bluewater] because I was offered a promotion [by Deepwater] that was very attractive to me.” He said Deepwater approached him about the job.
Before joining Bluewater, Lanard had previously worked on environmental issues at The Walt Disney Co., served as chief of staff to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and was executive director of the New Jersey Environmental Lobby and the Clean Air Council of Philadelphia, according to his corporate biography. He has a law degree from the University of Miami and lives in New Jersey.
Wissemann told the paper that he and Lanard worked together as New Jersey formulated its own offshore wind policies, which led to research contracts for both Deepwater and Bluewater.
“It seemed like there was good chemistry,” Wissemann told The News Journal. “Deepwater Wind was interested in putting together a team that can go after this industry. It was more than I could pull off alone. He’s one of the key guys who knows the industry and was effective moving it forward.”
Deepwater is proposing two wind farm projects in the Atlantic waters off Rhode Island: a 20-megawatt wind farm, consisting of five to eight turbines, to be located three miles off Block Island and put into operation by June 2012; and a 100-turbine, 385-megawatt wind farm in federal waters that would power roughly 120,000 homes. Federal documents say construction on Deepwater’s larger wind farm would start in 2015.
For more information, visit Deepwater Wind at dwwind.com or Bluewater Wind at bluewaterwind.com.
