2025 Symposium - Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Day 1 - Welcome
Day 1 welcomed attendees to INORE's 2025 North American Symposium, co-hosted by The ARROW: Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind! Attendees met at Northeastern University and included 26 participants from 6 different countries.
Our Welcome Session outlined our jam-packed schedule for the week, including exciting site visits, insightful industry presentations and panel discussions, fun socializing activities, and sightseeing around the beautiful city of Boston.
Day 2 - presentations, posters, and baseball
Day 2 was a day filled with exploration— both intellectually and physically! Today, the first half of our participants shared their research with the group with topics ranging from wave energy PTO design to fisheries protection to weather modeling (and more!).
We got to hear from Dr. Sanjay Arwade from ARROW who talked about their mission to advance offshore wind research and workforce development in the US. Dr. Andrew Myers, PhD, PE, professor at Northeastern University, also welcomed us to the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Northeastern, which will serve as our “home base” for the week.
We also heard from a panel of offshore wind experts, including Jesse Baldwin, P.G. from ThayerMahan, Inc., and Lia Howard and Kelsey Perry from OW Ocean Winds. Their insights informed us on the timeline of offshore wind projects from (before) start to finish. Key takeaways:
- Jesse explained the processes that offshore wind developers need to take immediately after winning a bid for development, specifically the type of investigation work required before and during construction.
- Lia outlined the years-long permitting processes that offshore wind farms must comply with to responsibly develop this source of renewable energy.
- Kelsey highlighted the importance of stakeholder engagement with groups like fisheries, coastal communities, and tribal nations - and how we all have a role to play in advocating for offshore renewable energy.
We ended the day taking in the cultural and historic beauty of the city of Boston during our annual scavenger hunt. The clues to the scavenger hunt led our participants from historical and cultural sites to Fenway Park, where we all enjoyed watching the Red Sox secure a win against the Tampa Bay Rays!
Day 3 - Site Visits
An absolute jam-packed day for our trip to New Bedford, MA! New Bedford is the nation's top commercial fishing port by value, the launching pad of the nation's offshore wind industry, and a regional hub of commerce, transportation, culture, and recreation. While there, Carlos Avila, from the New Bedford Ocean Cluster graciously gave us a tour of four blue economy organizations, including:
The New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal (NBMCT) - which had 9 new Haliade X blades and several tower and nacelle components in transit for installation at Vineyard Wind 1. This visit solidified the scale and size of offshore wind components, the organizations involved, and the workforce. Thank you to George Morant from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center for giving us the tour!
The National Offshore Wind Institute (NOWI) - which is home to offshore wind classes and trainings critical to filling immediate offshore wind workforce needs. The tour featured a variety of cutting edge training technologies and simulation spaces, and emphasized the importance of the growing offshore wind workforce.
New Bedford Research & Robotics (NBRR) - where we had a glimpse into the future of robotics applications, including clean energy and blue tech. NBRR focuses on research between post-education and pre-industry and commercialization, ensuring the insights from research make it into the market. Thank you to the NBRR interns who gave us hands-on intros to their research.
And the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (UMass SMaST) Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, Dean of UMass Dartmouth’s SMaST, showed us some of the research that their institution has been conducting, specifically focused on how the introduction of offshore wind farms might affect the local marine life populations. Dr. Stokesbury also showed us their East Seawater Lab, where we got to see lots of active fish and shellfish! We finished up the tours with a fun visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and had a nice local seafood dinner on the waterfront.
Day 4 - Games, Presentation, and Awards
Another day of learning about offshore renewable energies, this time through role-playing! Our very own delegate Jillian Eller facilitated a Marine Spatial Planning board game for the group where participants worked to introduce marine energy into a fictitious sea, with each player representing a various stakeholder within their respective fictional communities. The game was incredibly interactive (with a 9ft x 5ft board!) and induced many thought-provoking discussions recognizing the complexity of spatial planning. Thanks, Jillian!
We got a very informative presentation from Bill Staby at Blue Water Network about international standards within the marine energy space! Bill is a member of the Advisory Committee on Environmental Aspects and the International Electrotechnical Commission TC114 Chapter. He talked about the importance of planning for efficiency and sustainability within the design process.
The second half of our participants shared their research via presentations and posters. Congrats to our Best Presentation winner Katherine Coughlan, PhD and our Best Poster Winners Danu Riyanto and Nicole Marone!
We were also honored to welcome Dr. Jessica Redfern, Associate Vice President of Ocean Conservation Science at the New England Aquarium! Dr. Redfern has had an inspirational career in wildlife conservation studying everything from antelopes in the African Savanna to krill in the sea. She spoke about the importance of monitoring marine mammals in offshore wind lease areas to get a better understanding of potential impacts on the mammals, including but not limited to feeding and travel patterns, bodily stress, and possible collisions. She also talked about how climate change is one of the biggest threats to marine mammals and how, if developed responsibly, offshore wind can be one tool to help mitigate those threats.
We ended the night with our last group dinner together where we let loose with some live music and dancing!
Day 4 - MassCEC Visit and Goodbyes
Our last day of symposium activities wrapped up with a visit to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Wind Technology Testing Center. The WTTC offers a full suite of certification tests for turbine blades for a variety of customers. We heard from Carly Lavender about the types of testing offered in the facility, the logistics of testing such large blades, and how the center interacts with their customers.
Thanks to all our delegates, sponsors, and committee members for another great year of INORE!
