The Hampton Roads Alliance is pleased to celebrate the announcement of new projects at Fairwinds Landing which will transform the underutilized Lambert’s Point Dock cargo terminal into a hub for offshore wind energy, shipbuilding, and maritime logistics. As Doug Smith, President & CEO of the Hampton Roads Alliance, explains, “Offshore wind in Hampton Roads is growing rapidly, and this project is a major milestone in that growth.”

Demolition will begin in the next several weeks at the longtime Lambert’s Point Docks property in order to prepare for its future use as a offshore wind hub. Fairwinds Landing, LLC, a company formed by local developer and business owner Jerry Miller, signed a 30-year lease with Norfolk Southern for use of the 111-acre property last year.

Fairwinds Landing LLC is demolishing dilapidated infrastructure, preparing to construct new facilities and signing tenants as it transforms Norfolk Southern Corp.’s Lambert’s Point Docks in Norfolk into Fairwinds Landing, a maritime operations and logistics center supporting Hampton Roads’ offshore wind, defense and transportation industries.

Governor Glenn Youngkin today announced $1.5 million in Port Host Communities Revitalization Fund awards for the cities of Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth. The three grants will redevelop a world-class maritime operations and logistics center in Norfolk, a bulkhead replacement project in Portsmouth and the rehabilitation of a waterfront industrial property in Newport News.

The 2.6-gigawatt, $9.8 billion offshore wind farm from Richmond-based utility Dominion Energy Inc. is anticipated to support 1,100 direct and indirect full-time jobs across the region, paying $82 million annually in salaries and benefits, according to a 2020 economic impact study commissioned by the Hampton Roads Alliance. Construction is expected to create 900 direct and indirect jobs statewide, paying $57 million in salaries and benefits. To see how Hampton Roads is preparing for this, you have to sweep 50 miles west of the turbines, to Tidewater Community College’s Portsmouth campus, where the school’s 20,000-square-foot Skilled Trades Academy is adding 13,000 more square feet of space.

Located 27 miles off the coast of the northern Outer Banks, the Kitty Hawk Wind Energy Area is being developed by Avangrid, an international energy development company. Initial plans call for the northern third of the lease area to be developed. The latest information from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management indicates that 69 wind turbines will be permitted at the Kitty Hawk North location.

Construction is set to begin late this year on a service operations vessel that will transport technicians and equipment to support the massive wind turbines that Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A. is installing for Dominion Energy Inc.’s $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off the Virginia Beach coast. The 289-foot vessel is scheduled to enter service in 2026 as part of a 15-year charter with Siemens Gamesa. It will be the third SOV built in the U.S. and will be homeported in Hampton Roads.

Dominion’s regulators approved a suite of renewable energy projects proposed by the utility in a move that goes against State Corporation Commission staff’s recommendation to deny two projects because of cost concerns.

U.S. offshore wind developer Dominion Energy is kicking off unexploded ordinance identification within the export cable corridor and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind lease area located offshore of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a notice to mariners that the UXO works would start on or about April 25, 2023, and run until Fall 2023.

The American Clean Power Association (ACP) has released a report on the US offshore wind market, outlining a rapidly growing pipeline of projects across 32 leases totaling 51,377 MW of expected capacity which is enough to power the equivalent of more than 20 million homes.

The military is raising some concerns about potential for offshore wind in the country’s mid-Atlantic region, saying that it could interfere with Defense Department interests there. According to a preliminary map that was obtained by The Hill, the Pentagon marked several areas to the east and southeast of the Chesapeake Bay as “areas that are highly problematic.”

With recent pro-renewables legislation passing in both the United States and Canada that encourage energy storage adoption, the North American wind industry enters a new era. This intermittent energy resource can now more easily be supplemented by energy storage to provide a dispatchable electricity solution. This makes wind power competitive not only at the cost level, but also in reliability.