Wind industry gets warm welcome at annual UMass Dartmouth conference

FALL RIVER — The winds of change are blowing, and pretty soon they’re going to be powering your toaster oven.

Thursday marked the second year in a row that UMass Dartmouth has hosted its annual conference on the state’s wind energy industry. While he wasn’t on staff at UMass at the time, Phil Adams, assistant vice chancellor of the school’s Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, said this year’s event appeared to be markedly different.

“It’s like the dawning of a new era and it’s happening fast. The transition is very quick when these things start to tip,” he said. “I don’t think there were any sponsors at the conference last year. This year we have seven or eight.”

Among those sponsors was Anbaric, the Wakefield-based company that recently announced its plans to convert the site of the former Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset into a new facility that could convert 1,200 megawatts of electricity generated by offshore wind turbines.

However, Anbaric isn’t the only one looking to capitalize on the winds blowing offshore. City officials in Fall River are now trying to amend local zoning bylaws to allow new development at Weaver’s Cove. The proposed amendments would allow for wind energy research and development, or any processing, fabrication, manufacturing or support services tied to wind energy. A potential tenant company has yet to be announced, but Mayor Jasiel Correia has hinted that there is one and that the city has “confirmed that demand for wind energy development capacity is increasing.”

The interest in bringing businesses supporting wind energy to the greater Fall River area is there. Thursday’s conference was a conversation about how to take advantage of that interest.

Attendees included elected officials and members of the business and academic communities. Presentations covered the enthusiasm for wind energy and ways to bring it to the region, but they also revealed what some of the future benefits could be for the people of Fall River.

Several people in the industry provided their projections for how the local job market may be affected.

“This is a big job creation story, particularly for offshore wind and potential job creation for coastal cities,” said Philippe Frangules, vice president for global power, gas, coal and renewable for the company IHS Markit. “One gigawatt of generation, it is said, can create 8,000 jobs. ... Nine gigawatts of offshore (energy) could create 180,000 job years.”

Peter Rothstein, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, said the NCEC tracks wind energy employment numbers and that significant increases have been reported in the last few years. He said NCEC has tracked an 84 percent job growth in the region since 2010 and that 1,500 jobs were created last year alone.

Referring to the various companies building wind turbines off Massachusetts’ coast, Rothstein said, “We are absolutely in front for the U.S. and we’ve got seven active leases. We have four highly qualified offshore wind development companies.”

When asked what the outlook was like for the region in the next few years, Bruce Carlisle, senior director of offshore wind for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, said the future looked positive.

“In five years, I look ahead and I see five to seven gigawatts offshore up and running in the southern New England area with a fairly well-developed and mature workforce,” he said. “In 10 years, it’s going to be double that.”

If Carlisle’s projections are correct, and Frangules’ metric for job creation is accurate, as many as 80,000 to 112,000 jobs could be created in southern New England over the next decade.