Ports, being chokepoints, are a pivotal part of these discussions, which sometimes devolve into arguments about where the money will come from.<\/p>\n
So, looking northeast from my New York perch, it was very refreshing to see a story of a port changing its strategic focus and effectively reinventing itself. And, by the way, the money for this re-invention comes from a mix of state government and private funding – a public-private partnership structure that readers may remember from the pre megaship and mega-port days.<\/p>\n
Seabury Maritime LLC, an investment bank combining maritime expertise with an environmental finance capability, was the transaction advisor to Connecticut Port Authority (CPA) on this seminal deal which melded a strategic initiative with real money.<\/p>\n
Connecticut, adjacent to New York, has suffered as people and industrial activity have shifted away from the northeast over the decades. Its main port at New London, approximately halfway between New York and Boston, has remained a niche player on the commercial side with the major commodities handled being refined petroleum products and breakbulk (steel and some lumber). Fast forward to 2019, when offshore wind energy suddenly hit its stride in the US, and rather than chase the fickle raw material and neo-bulk cargo flows, CPA made a bold move towards the wind energy markets.<\/p>\n
And those offshore wind currents are flowing fast. A December 2018 Federal lease auction for slots off the coast of southern New England netted the government more than $400m. A few months earlier, a US arm of \u00d8rsted (the Danish offshore power behemoth) had acquired the US-based Deepwater Wind, a venture capital-backed pioneer in the early acquisition of wind energy sites secured through prior government leasing rounds, in a $510m transaction. Deepwater Wind operates the first offshore wind farm in US waters, off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n
In their recently announced PPP deal, CPA and terminal operator Gateway will partner with Bay State Wind, a joint venture between regional energy provider Eversource and \u00d8rsted, on a nearly $100m effort that will see the State Pier at New London rebuilt for purpose.<\/p>\n
The current is indeed flowing and energising Connecticut in a big way. Memo to other ports: watch this trend closely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COMMENT: With the 2020 election season heating up in the US, political pronouncements about infrastructure, are becoming more frequent, writes Barry Parker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-new-yorker"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}