Solely permitted Nice Lakes offshore wind farm placed on maintain

The Division of Vitality is revoking $37 million beforehand awarded to the six-turbine Icebreaker wind venture, which has been within the works since 2009.

On Dec. 8, after 14 years of small victories and bigger setbacks, the remnants of the corporate behind Icebreaker Wind introduced the indefinite suspension of what was as soon as set to be the primary offshore wind farm constructed within the Nice Lakes.

The choice by the Lake Erie Vitality Growth Company (LEEDCo) to “quickly halt” the venture got here as little shock to those that had been following it. Icebreaker was the one venture of its variety to come back near fruition. However it had barely survived a stream of authorized disputes and allowing delays that put it a few years delayed, and was nonetheless nowhere close to having generators within the water.

“The writing’s been on the wall for a very long time,” mentioned Richard Stuebi, who headed the venture from its inception in 2009 till the primary official president took over in 2010. “And simply increasingly scribbles in darker and darker ink have been added over the previous decade or so.”

One of many greatest sources of concern through the years was the chance that the U.S. Division of Vitality, unhappy with LEEDCo’s halting progress, would revoke the $50 million in federal funding that saved the nonprofit’s sole venture viable. In the long run, that’s what occurred.