offshore wind

The delegation is traveling to two countries with established offshore wind energy industries at a time when the Mills administration is facing political headwinds while trying to jump-start the sector in Maine.

At an American floating offshore wind conference in Portland this week, developers and investors' confidence in the future of wind is unshakeable.

Six of the potential wind plots are located off outer Cape Cod. The remaining two sites are off the Maine coast. In total, the sites encompass about 850,000 acres, about 120,000 fewer acres than initially proposed earlier this year.

A new report said leasing will have no environmental impact.

The lease area covers about 15,000 acres and is located nearly 30 miles off the southern Maine coast. The site would have a dozen floating offshore wind turbines capable of generating up to 144 megawatts of renewable energy.

Sprague Energy, which owns the nearby Mack Point terminal in Searsport, is making its own case that the state of Maine's proposed wind port should be located there.

The environmental group says building offshore wind generation will cut regional electric bills.

Maine has been exploring the possibility of building an offshore wind port for some time. But with the recent release of its federal grant application, a clearer picture of the plans, the timeline and the cost is coming into focus.

Up to a dozen floating wind turbine platforms would be located about 30 nautical miles southeast of Portland as part of a project to study the UMaine-developed technology and its interactions with the surrounding environment.

If approved, the federal grant would cover about two-thirds of the nearly $760 million that the state of Maine estimates it will need to build the port and a heavy-lift semi-submersible barge that's needed to launch the floating wind turbine foundations.