Wind turbines just offshore are being built 15 miles south of Jones Beach, anchored beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Now, the renewable energy company behind the project, Equinor, wants to build a factory to construct and assemble additional turbines. It is eying a site in the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal on the Sunset Park waterfront. 

"It's 73 acres, which is unheard of, really, in New York City,” says Julia Bovey with Equinor Wind US. “It's a lot of space, and that's exactly what we need because these pieces are so large."

What You Need To Know

  • Norway-based energy company Equinor wants to construct wind turbines in Brooklyn

  • It proposed the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal as the manufacturing plant site

  • The 73-acre property is owned by the city

  • The project needs New York State approval

Each of the fully assembled turbines will be about as tall as the Chrysler Building.

Equinor, based in Norway, released an animation of the port it proposes to create in Brooklyn. Equinor says the city-owned site is the perfect size, but it needs a lot of infrastructure work. 

"It needs to have some strengthening done so that the wharfs can support the weight of these really, really heavy components”, says Bovey. “And it needs to have the waters around the wharfs become a little bit deeper so that large ships can come in."

Equinor also needs state approval for its Sunset Park application. Last year, it got the go-ahead for the offshore wind farm, which it calls Empire Winds. Its new plan, Empire Winds Phase Two, would expand the wind farm and create the factory in Brooklyn to build the new turbines.

Congress members Nydia Velazquez and Jerrold Nadler, who represent the industrial waterfront, support the project. They just wrote to Governor Andrew Cuomo saying the project would create hundreds of green jobs and address climate change.

The activist group UPROSE, which helped to defeat the Industry City rezoning that would have accommodated big-box retail, hotels and tech companies next to the port proposal site, says the Equinor proposal builds for a sustainable future. 

"The vision is what we call a just transition, is exactly the manifestation of things we've been talking about," says UPROSE Executive Director Elizabeth Yeampierre. “To take the spaces, particularly industrial spaces, and repurpose them to address climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience."

The city has committed $57 million to upgrade the site. If the state approves the project, the state Energy Research and Development Authority would chip in $200 million, matched by private money. A decision is expected next month.