Island’s benefits agreement with Vineyard Wind made public

The Island’s agreement, negotiated through the nonprofit Vineyard Power, that lays out benefits to the community in exchange for support of the Vineyard Wind 1 project, was publicly released Tuesday, 10 years after the original document was signed.

The agreement, which outlines obligations for both Vineyard Wind and Vineyard Power, was published after a Times reporter asked to see the contract in the wake of news related to Nantucket’s agreement in recent weeks. Richard Andre, president and director of Vineyard Power, said that this prompted a necessary process to get all signatories to sign off on release.

The community benefits agreement (CBA) generally arranges for Vineyard Power to support and advocate for the Vineyard Wind 1 project in the community in return for customized benefits for the Island, such as energy savings for low-income ratepayers, investments in solar and battery-storage projects on-Island, and modernization of the Tisbury working waterfront. The nonprofit Vineyard Power set up a subsidiary — originally Island Wind, then reassigned to the Vineyard Power Development Fund — as party to the contract. (For readability, this article references Vineyard Power, not its subsidiary, for the remainder of the text.)

In recent weeks, and in the face of an industry currently widely perceived as nontransparent, some Vineyard officials also pushed to see the Island’s agreement. Edgartown formally asked to see the document in early August. The Chilmark Select Board also asked Vineyard Power representatives to see the agreement once released, and after the project was discussed in last week’s meeting.

There’s “significant conversation” about the wind farm on Nantucket, James Hagerty, Edgartown town administrator, said. There’s less conversation on the Vineyard, but a huge part of that discussion is the CBA, he added. Hagerty, one local official who said litigation similar to Nantucket is a consideration of the town in response to last year’s turbine blade failure, wanted full transparency on who advocates for Island towns with regard to the project. Benefits of the agreement were communicated to towns over the past decade, and he assumed the agreement was a public document.

Multiple documents were released, which include the “Third Amended and Restated Community Benefits Agreement for Vineyard Wind 1” and the implementation agreement of the Resiliency and Affordability Program (RAP). The RAP document outlines the legalities around the allocation of funds from Vineyard Wind as part of the CBA. Minutes and presentations from an advisory committee, which has a representative from every town, meets annually, and selects projects to be financed by the RAP, and which is required by the agreement, were also made public.

No one had a problem with the release, Andre said. “The general consensus was, ‘Let’s get the documents out.’” All the benefits were publicly discussed, and every town understood what was in the agreement, but “no one had ever asked” to see the actual documents, he said. All parties involved in the agreement –– Vineyard Power, Vineyard Wind, and joint developers of the offshore wind farm Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners –– needed to sign off on release before the documents were made public.

Private parties can keep agreements and contracts confidential, as they aren’t subject to the public records law. The town of Nantucket is party to its benefits agreement, and so it is public as a government document. No town signed the Vineyard CBA, but all did sign letters of support for Vineyard Wind at the end of 2017. 

Vineyard Power, formed in 2009 by a group of Islanders in response to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s Island Plan to move the Island toward 100 percent renewable energy by 2040, originally hoped to own an offshore wind farm for the Island. When that idea became infeasible financially, the nonprofit decided to partner with an offshore wind developer, and contractually secure benefits of ownership through the now-public agreement.

Vineyard Power and Vineyard Wind negotiated the first offshore wind CBA in the nation, and as the only bidder with a signed agreement, Vineyard Wind won the 166,886-acre lease on the Outer Continental Shelf with a 10 percent discount on price. (Vineyard Wind 1, the project currently under construction, is 64,296 acres in the northernmost part of the lease area; the other 101,590 acres are reserved for New England Wind projects, which are fully federally permitted, but Massachusetts officials recently paused power purchase agreement contracts until February 2026.)

There are references in the CBA to three other iterations of this agreement, which were signed between Jan. 14, 2015, and Jan. 1, 2021. The current agreement, which was made effective Jan. 1, 2022, is an evolution of agreements from 2015, Andre said. The several iterations come from legal name changes or negotiations for better deals, he added.

Based on the agreement, the nonprofit is required to support the project by educating the public and public officials on the benefits of offshore wind, provide advice to Vineyard Wind on how to obtain public support, and advocate for offshore wind policies on behalf of the project. It also states Vineyard Power is responsible for facilitating “Vineyard Wind’s efforts to ensure that one hundred percent (100%) of the [operations and maintenance facility’s] staffing needs for the Project are sourced from the Martha’s Vineyard community.” This is to occur within five years of the commercial operation date of the project, as stated in an addendum to the agreement, which is currently estimated to be at the end of this year.

Vineyard Wind’s obligations include establishment of a community benefits program and reception of input from the nonprofit and community stakeholders on development of the project. Mutually, the two parties agreed to “investigate” local job creation opportunities; consumer benefits, such as stabilized electricity rates or favorable rate for low-income residents; and opportunities for Vineyard Power to “finance, purchase, own, or take an equity position in” the lease area to secure benefits for Massachusetts residents, especially those on the Island.

A huge gripe for local officials is communication, and that is one piece of the Vineyard agreement: The parties mutually agree to “consult with the other Party on a regular basis with regard to other community benefits of an offshore wind project, community relations, and project design, in particular with regard to means by which to enhance the benefits and value, or mitigate detriments, of the Project to the Martha’s Vineyard community.”

Addendums in the agreement include the CBA Work Plan, which states Vineyard Power is responsible for community relations with the six towns, local public officials, residents, seasonal visitors, fisheries stakeholders, and tribal communities on the Island, specifically the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe. The work plan also includes obligations associated with the operation and maintenance facility on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven and implementation of the community benefits program. In order for Vineyard Power to execute the agreement, Vineyard Wind pays Vineyard Power $181,967.82 annually, with a 2 percent adjustment every year for “reasonable and necessary expenses, including staffing needs to execute the tasks.” According to the agreement, the parties are not partners, and Vineyard Power’s subsidiary is “an independent contractor to Vineyard Wind.”

In return, Vineyard Wind established the Resiliency and Affordability Program (RAP). The offshore wind company agreed to pay $15 million, split between Vineyard Power and Citizens Energy Corporation, a Boston-based nonprofit, into a fund. Vineyard Power is entitled to half of that money, which enters the fund over 15 years. Eligible projects for the monies include solar projects that generate savings for low-income ratepayers, resiliency redesigns or infrastructure energy projects, and solar and battery storage projects.

So far, Vineyard Power has allocated more than $3.7 million over the next 15 years for facilities to access solar technology, and committed funds to the West Tisbury library, the Tisbury Senior Center, and the Wampanoag Tribe. The nonprofit also allocated $200,000 annually to subsidize electricity costs to income-eligible households on the Island, donated $40,000 to the Island Housing Trust’s Kuehn’s Way housing project to subsidize solar costs, and pledged $210,000 for solar development at Meshacket Commons and Tackenash Knoll, according to the Vineyard Power website.

The topic of the CBA came up at a Chilmark Select Board meeting last week. Rob Hannemann, who came to speak as an individual, but who is chairperson for the Chilmark Energy Committee (suspended for the summer), said, “Vineyard Wind has, to my knowledge, fulfilled every aspect of their community benefits agreement with us.”

Termination of this agreement is set for Dec. 31, 2031, but payments from the RAP fund continue until completed in approximately 2039, Andre said.

Difference between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard CBAs

The nature of what’s negotiated for in community benefits agreements differs from place to place, and though the structure of the two island CBAs are similar, one (Nantucket) is between the developer, the town, and other entities, and the other (Martha’s Vineyard) is between the developer and an Island nonprofit. Nantucket’s agreement was negotiated five years after the Vineyard’s CBA, and was a means to resolve the adverse effects of the wind farm under the National Historic Preservation Act.

In recent weeks, Nantucket has made headlines after the town received a $10.5 million settlement with offshore wind manufacturer GE Vernova over last year’s turbine blade failure in early July. Nantucket officials also publicized a list of demands they made to the offshore wind company Vineyard Wind.

Nantucket’s demands, which include the establishment of communication protocols, an escrow fund for potential cleanup costs, and public input on new emergency response plans, were made on the basis of the Good Neighbor Agreement, which is also a community benefits agreement. Nantucket Select Board member Brooke Mohr called the document their “most effective legal tool” in a press conference at the end of July.

“The fact that there are contractual obligations is the basis for the leverage that we have legally, at least at this point in time,” Mohr said. “And so that is our hope — to strengthen the agreements in place in terms of communication, accountability first.”

The language in the Good Neighbor Agreement bears some semblance structurally to the CBA on the Vineyard, but Vineyard Wind’s obligations are much more specific in the Nantucket agreement, such as agreement to paint the turbines a nonreflective off-white or light gray color to blend into the horizon, as well as to install the aircraft detection lighting system, which was recently announced as active on installed turbines.

The Nantucket agreement also says that no future turbines “will be sited closer to Nantucket Historic District than the front row of turbines currently planned for Vineyard Wind 1 Project.”

There are no other CBAs for the Vineyard from a wind farm other than Vineyard Wind. Revolution Wind, under construction 12 miles southwest of the Island, is a partnership between Ørsted and Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables.

“While Revolution Wind does not have any specific community benefit agreements on Martha’s Vineyard, since the project does not have any infrastructure on the Vineyard itself, the project values the opportunity to work with communities on the Island to execute a number of their priorities to help preserve historic properties as part of the project approval process,” Chris Raia, Ørsted spokesperson, said.

The restoration of Gay Head Lighthouse and other historic structures in Aquinnah were funded as part of a mitigation agreement by Revolution Wind.