OFFSHORE WIND

Today, onshore wind power is the most productive renewable energy source in America, generating nearly half of its renewable energy. In 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA),renewable energy sources accounted for about 20.1% of all electricity generated (primarily from wind, solar & hydropower) --of which 9.2.% was from wind, up from 8.4% in 2019 . The growth of wind power has been astonishing – especially when you consider that wind energy only made up 0.2% of U.S. electricity generating capacity in 1990. The U.S. is now investing more in a clean energy transition than any other country in the world except China --which has got us seriously beat.

Offshore wind is well developed in other parts of the world but just getting started in the U.S.  Our explosion is about to occur.

The first five turbines, a 30 MW project developed by Deepwater Wind (now owned by Orsted) went live in 2016 providing 100% energy to Block Island with the excess going to Rhode Island’s mainland.  Two years later, in 2018, Amory B. Lovins, co-founder and chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization that advises on renewable energy, said, “We could run the whole East Coast on offshore wind.”  His words were prescient although we did endure four years of apparent federal inactivity from 2017-2020.

This changed after Biden’s election in 2021 with the administration moving swiftly to announce a goal of 30 GW from offshore wind by 2030.

• In May, 2021, BOEM had approved Vineyard Wind, calling for 84-turbines to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Together, they have the ability to generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 400,000 homes.
• Also in May, BOEM gave its blessing to two areas off the California coast.
• By October, 2021,  Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that her agency will begin to identify, demarcate and hope to eventually lease federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine and off the coasts of the Mid-Atlantic States, North Carolina and South Carolina, California and Oregon, to wind power developers by 2025.
• By January, 2022, BOEM’s review of the South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine, 132 MW project southeast off Long Island, with a cable landing in Wainscott, a hamlet within the Town of East Hampton, was complete and approved. Despite a significant amount of litigation, construction is proceeding and Orsid operations are scheduled to begin at the end of 2023 powering 70,000 New York homes.
• In February, 2022, the U.S. netted a record $4.37 billion from the sale of six additional offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey. When these turbines are built and operational, the auctioned acres are expected to generate up to 7,000 megawatts, enough to power nearly 2 million homes. The Interior Department has said between that project and others currently under review, it hopes to see some 2,000 turbines churning from Massachusetts to North Carolina by the end of this decade.
• On October 18-19, 2022, the Offshore Wind Power Conference & Exhibition takes place at the convention center in Providence Rhode Island. And, the day before, you can take a boat tour to see America’s first five offshore wind turbines at Block Island.