Crowley joins Vineyard Wind to turn Salem Harbour into offshore wind port

Crowley Maritime Corporation has joined forces with Vineyard Wind, the developer of the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the US, alongside the City of Salem to establish Salem Harbor as a major offshore wind port.

The public-private partnership will see Crowley, through its New Energy subsidiary Crowley Wind Services, purchase the 42 acres surrounding Salem Harbor Station, and serve as the long-term offshore wind port operator for the site.

“Given Salem Harbor’s deep-water port and unrestricted height access to accommodate large-scale wind turbine installation vessels, Vineyard Wind sees Salem Harbor as a necessary addition to support the offshore wind industry within the Commonwealth and across the region,” the developer said.

Vineyard Wind estimates that the project would create up to an estimated 400 full time equivalent yearly jobs during the revitalisation of the port and up to another 500 full-time jobs over the first five years of operation for construction and staging of wind projects and also day-to-day port operations.

Vineyard Wind is bidding for two more offshore wind projects in Massachusetts as part of the Commonwealth Wind proposals, planned to be developed in an area just south of its 800 MW Vineyard Wind 1 and 804 MW Park City Wind projects.

Following the redevelopment of Salem Harbor, Avangrid Renewables will be the first tenant to utilise the site to assemble and deploy offshore wind turbines for Commonwealth Wind and future projects. CIP will be the second tenant to utilise the terminal to assemble and deploy turbines for their future projects.