Watching Hudson’s rising wind business

COEYMANS — When John Lipscomb pilots his 36-foot wooden Riverkeeper boat up the Hudson River he sometimes thinks about what the waterway looked like in pre-Colonial times before it was harnessed for industrial commerce.

“You wouldn’t recognize it,” Lipscomb said during a recent trip upriver, as he spread out a navigation chart of the river showing its various twists and turns between New York City and Troy.

Before Henry Hudson arrived and before the European fur traders, farmers, and factory-builders came, the Hudson was far shallower than today. It was riddled with islands and backwaters that created a palette of wetlands teeming with fish, birds and other creatures.

The modern environmental movement, of which Lipscomb is part, has led to a major cleanup of the river leaving it cleaner than decades ago, when the Hudson suffered oil slicks, raw sewage spills and PCB dumping.

Lipscomb wants to keep that progress moving. The Riverkeeper organization where he is vice president and co-director of the patrol program is dedicated to protecting the Hudson River.

Today, with the Hudson on the precipice of an offshore wind industry boom, Lipscomb’s antenna is up, especially as he cruises past some of the ports that are expanding to accommodate what will likely be large manufacturing plants where components of offshore wind farms will be built.

From these riverside plants, at Albany, Newburgh, Coeymans and perhaps East Greenbush and Rensselaer, developers hope that wind-tower parts will be built and shipped down the Hudson on barges before being assembled in the waters off Long Island.

The Riverkeeper, with a staff of scientists, lawyers and activists, is already playing a role in how the ports are developed.

They will have their hands full for the next several years, especially as New York state enacts the third solicitation, or bid, for offshore wind developers to create a series of wind farms off the Long Island coast which should eventually power more about 1.3 million homes.

After discussions with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, for instance, developers at the Port of Albany’s Beacon Island site have agreed to put in monitoring wells to ensure that fly ash from what was a coal plant on the site doesn’t seep into the river.

And they are looking at whether dredging will be needed in Newburgh, where there’s a proposal to fabricate steel parts needed for the wind farms.

When it comes to offshore wind development, much of the focus in the Capital Region has been on the Port of Albany which has expanded onto Beacon Island in Bethlehem. That site is currently being prepared for a wind tower plant built by a partnership of the Marmen Welcon Canadian and Danish manufacturing firms to build wind towers up to 800 feet tall. Assembled in pieces, they will be shipped by barge down the Hudson River.

Ten miles south, the Port of Coeymans is rapidly expanding an existing port to accommodate what developers hope will be two plants where General Electric wants to build turbine blades and nacelles, or the housings that contain the power generating equipment.

Coeymans is also hosting a plant at which the Danish Orsted wind company and Saugerties-based Riggs Distler construction firm will build the specialized underwater foundations for some of the wind farms.

And developers on the New-burgh-New Windsor border in Orange County plan to resurrect a shuttered steel fabrication plant to build components.

In East Greenbush, a group of property owners is looking to potentially host a blade plant. The Danish firm Vestas has already purchased an option on that land.

The Port of Albany is also eyeing the facility it controls on the west side of the Hudson in Rensselaer, at the site of the long-closed BASF chemical plant.

“The Port is intending to develop the former BASF site in the green energy manufacturing arena,” said Port of Albany spokeswoman Penny Vavura. Further details of that plan, though are still in the works.

All of this means plenty of work for people like Lipscomb and the Riverkeeper as they keep tabs on the activity.

Environmental groups, especially the Riverkeeper organization, can have a lot of influence.

Almost a decade ago, River-keeper organization and other environmentalists were battling plans by an oil firm, Global Companies, to receive rail shipments of tar sands from western Canada to a terminal next to the Port of Albany.

From there, the heavy crude oil would be transferred to barges plying the Hudson. They also wanted to process the crude at the site.

That plan was dropped in 2018 amid heavy opposition and a then-declining market for the crude oil products.

Oil from the Bakken fields of North Dakota had also been coming through the port area, although that also ceased amid price declines several years ago.

Transporting steel towers and machinery up and down the river isn’t expected to pose the same risk as potential oil leaks or spills.

And Lipscomb noted that Riverkeeper, like most green organizations, are foursquare behind the concept of carbon-free wind-driven power production. “It’s gospel for us,” he said.

But there are concerns about dredging and the impact of riverfront development on the river itself.

“A river isn’t healthy unless it also has healthy edges,” said Lipscomb.

One of the Riverkeeper’s priorities may focus on Coeymans, where a small but determined band of residents, some of whom live near the port, have been complaining over the size of the development there.

The port was 120 acres when it opened in 2006. Over the years it has grown to the point where Carver Companies, which owns and operates the port, or companies that work with the Carver, occupy 665 acres.

That, said Barbara Heinzen, could grow to more than 1,000 acres if Carver purchases other properties around the site that are on the market.

“We want no more expansion,” said Heinzen.

Heinzen, who owns a home and 20 acres along Hannacroix Creek just south of the port property, fears that what has been a quiet stretch of river is being drastically remade into an industrial site.

Carver Companies, the firm that operates the Port of Coeymans, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Newburgh may be less problematic. Plans there call for the use of the site of a derelict steel fabrication plant on a site that is already industrial.

And the waterfront is deep enough that dredging might not be needed, say supporters of the proposal.

“Our entire waterfront in Newburgh is deep water,” said Maureen Hallahan, President and CEO of Orange County Partnership, an economic development organization.

Less certain is what may develop in East Greenbush or Rensselaer.

Things may become clearer later this year when the New York State Energy Research and Development agency selects the winners in a “solicitation,” or round of proposals by wind developers, who want to build wind farms off Long Island.

It is the third round of projects being let by NYSERDA.

(The MarmenWelcon project in Albany and the Orsted/Riggs Distler program in Coeymans have already been selected to move forward in an earlier round of competitive bidding.)

Six international wind development groups have put in a total of eight major project bids. Included in those are more than 100 different proposals, or configurations, for how the wind farms would be built.

Companies that build towers and nacelles, such as General Electric, as well as overall developers including Orsted, National Grid and others are hoping to be chosen in that competition. That, in turn, will dictate how much activity develops at the various Hudson River ports.

There have been twists and turns in this competition, especially when it comes to finances.

At the Port of Albany, CEO Rich Hendrick earlier this year said the cost of building the 590,000-square-foot wind tower plant on Beacon Island has risen from $350 million to $604 million due to inflation.

Gov. Kathy Hochul declined to add more money for the publicly-operated port in the state’s recently-passed 2023-24 budget.

To move forward, the Port of Albany will now need private investors to participate in the third solicitation.

The solicitations or bids, are secret. While the bid deadline was in January, developers are adjusting their proposals thanks to the federal Inflation Reduction Act.

The law, passed last year by Congress, includes changes in the tax code that could impact the bids.

NYSERDA said they expect to open the bids this summer, although others believe it could come in late September, during New York City’s Climate Week, which aims to focus on climate issues.

And the solicitation rules have changed.

Cognizant of the rising costs that have plagued the Port of Albany, the new bids contain language that allows for an escalator, or an inflation factor.

That would essentially let bidders increase their price if the cost of “labor, fabrication materials, steel, fuel and copper,” rises after the bids are awarded.

“The developers have had the opportunities to see which way the market is trending and costs for supplies is increasing,” remarked Fred Zalcman, director of the NY Offshore Wind Alliance, a trade group representing the industry.

Those costs will ultimately be passed on to ratepayers.

Finances will no doubt have an impact on offshore wind development and that in turn could dictate the level of activity on the river’s ports.

But activists like Lipscomb say they also plan to remain focused on making sure wind doesn’t unfold in a way that would damage the river environment.

“We want to be part of the conversation,” he said.