December 9, 2023
Ohio

Only permitted Great Lakes offshore wind farm put on hold

By Nicole Pollack | December 8, 2023 | insideclimatenews.org

The Department of Energy is revoking $37 million previously awarded to the six-turbine Icebreaker wind project, which has been in the works since 2009.

On Dec. 8, after 14 years of small victories and larger setbacks, the remnants of the company behind Icebreaker Wind announced the indefinite suspension of what was once set to be the first offshore wind farm built in the Great Lakes.

The decision by the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo) to “temporarily halt” the project came as little surprise to those who had been following it. Icebreaker was the only project of its kind to come close to fruition. But it had barely survived a stream of legal disputes and permitting delays that put it many years behind schedule, and was still nowhere near having turbines in the water.

“The writing’s been on the wall for a long time,” said Richard Stuebi, who headed the project from its inception in 2009 until the first official president took over in 2010. “And just more and more scribbles in darker and darker ink have been added over the past decade or so.”

One of the biggest sources of concern over the years was the possibility that the U.S. Department of Energy, unsatisfied with LEEDCo’s halting progress, would revoke the $50 million in federal funding that kept the nonprofit’s sole project viable. In the end, that’s what happened.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2023/12/09/only-permitted-great-lakes-offshore-wind-farm-put-on-hold/