PROVIDENCE – A bill before the General Assembly that would reassign responsibility for approving an offshore wind farm could revive the project proposed off Block Island, developer Deepwater Wind LLC said Thursday.
The Senate bill filed Wednesday would give the heads of four state agencies, rather than the three-member R.I. Public Utilities Commission, the authority to sign off on a power-purchase agreement between Deepwater and National Grid Plc.
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In March, the PUC rejected a contract between the two companies, saying the price of electricity from the wind farm would be too high at 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour. State law provided no way to appeal the PUC decision.
The new Senate bill “at least allows us to entertain reviving the Block Island wind farm project,” Deepwater Chief Development Officer Paul Rich told Providence Business News on Thursday.
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri’s office worked closely with legislative leaders to shape the bill and supports its passage, spokeswoman Amy Kempe said. The governor had sharply criticized the PUC’s rejection of the proposed contract.
“The governor has been very clear that he doesn’t believe the PUC followed the legislature’s intent in making their decision,” Kempe said, referring to the law the triggered the initial PUC hearings.
“This legislation clarifies that intent and expands the application process to account for the total value of the project, both in terms of economic development and achieving the long-terms goals for renewable energy,” she added.
Deepwater’s Rich said if the General Assembly passes the bill within a few weeks, the company could meet its original goal of getting the $200 million wind farm up and running by 2012.
“We really need to see this passed relatively soon and it’s really a matter of weeks before we need to have activities taking place that will support the Block Island wind farm project and keep it on schedule,” he said.
That timeline would put the Block Island wind farm neck-and-neck with the Cape Wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound, which the federal government approved Wednesday and its developer hopes to have operational as soon as late 2012.
Kempe said the Cape Wind announcement and the bill’s introduction on the same day were a coincidence.
