PORTSMOUTH, Va. — A planned offshore wind turbine blade facility in Portsmouth that was expected to create hundreds of new jobs will not be moving forward, more than two years after it was first announced.
A spokesperson for the Port of Virginia confirmed to 13News Now Friday that the Spanish manufacturing company Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy backed out of the project about a month ago, adding that no reason for the cancelation was shared.
The $200 million facility was originally planned to be at Portsmouth Marine Terminal and would produce turbine blades supplying offshore wind projects in North America. Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced the project in October 2021, saying it would have created 310 new jobs, roughly 50 of which would support Dominion Energy's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project.
The cancelation comes after the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, located more than 20 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, was approved by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in October.
The project aims to build 176 turbines to generate enough electricity to power up to 660,000 homes once fully constructed. According to Dominion Energy, it will be the largest offshore wind farm under development in the country.
Jeremy Slayton, a spokesperson for Dominion, said Siemens Gamesa's decision won't affect the project and the company will manufacture the turbines.
"Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind remains on time and on budget," Slayton wrote in a statement. "This announcement in no way impacts our project. Due to the timing of our project, the proposed factory was not scheduled to manufacture our blades. They will be manufactured in Europe, as planned."
13News Now reached out to Siemens Gamesa for comment but didn't get an immediate response by the time this article was published.