The recent opinion piece “Taking the Long View on Wind Farms” by Rip Cunningham offered an important perspective on offshore wind development. However, we would like to clarify some of the points raised in the piece regarding DONG Energy’s Bay State Wind project here in Massachusetts.

DONG Energy — formerly Danish Oil and Natural Gas — has installed a quarter of all offshore windfarms and has a proven track record of working with all stakeholders, including the local fishing community. We try to ensure that the construction and operation of our turbines has the least impact as possible. To that end, we have already had several productive meetings with local stakeholders here on the Vineyard, and will be participating in meetings being held this month by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in regards to the Massachusetts offshore wind projects and development.

While the company was initially focused on the oil and gas business, DONG Energy has undergone a profound transition to clean, renewable energy over the last decade, shifting from 85 per cent of our energy in 2006 being produced by traditional sources such as coal, to 55 per cent generated by renewable sources today. And we are not stopping there. We have completed 19 offshore wind projects across the globe, with 3.0GW of capacity and 1,000 turbines installed in 2016. By 2020 we hope to double that capacity to 6.5GW.

In Massachusetts, our proposed Bay State Wind project will be a utility scale offshore wind farm with an installed capacity of up to 1,000MW. A project of this size typically includes approximately 100 turbines, far less than the 2,000 turbine figure Mr. Cunningham estimated.

And lastly, we expect Bay State Wind to generate new state and local economic opportunities, especially during operation with approximately 100 skilled jobs during the 25-year life of the wind farm.

We welcome Mr. Cunningham’ s perspective on this issue and look forward to continuing the dialogue with all residents of the Vineyard as we move forward to bring clean, reliable, cost-effective offshore wind energy to Massachusetts households and businesses.

Thomas Brostrøm
Boston

The writer is general manager of DONG Energy Wind Power U.S. Inc.