US 2024 elections: The American offshore wind push is accelerated
By Anders Lorenzen
At the turn of the year there was significant concern and worry that the US offshore wind industry could collapse before it had started.
But since then, market conditions have improved, and this week the Biden Administration announced its eighth offshore wind farm approval.
On Tuesday the US Interior Department approved the eighth US offshore wind project, New England Wind which will be constructed off the coast of Massachusetts with an estimated capacity to power up more than 900,000 US homes. The project is located around 20 nautical miles south of the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard and is expected to generate up to 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity. It will be built by Park City Wind, in a two-phased project plan comprising up to 129 wind turbine generators, with up to five offshore export cables transmitting electricity to onshore transmission systems. They will serve the towns of Barnstable and Bristol County in mainland Massachusetts.
The approval of this project comes just a week after the Department approved a New York offshore wind project. It is another key step towards the administration`s target of achieving 30 (GW) of offshore wind capacity by 2030. The eight approved projects have an estimated capacity of 10 GW, taking it to a third of its target.
The Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, commented: “The Biden-Harris administration has built an offshore wind industry from the ground up after years of delay from the previous administration.”
Scaling up the US offshore wind industry
The Biden Administration’s National Climate Advisor, Ali Zaidi, added: “Because of President Biden’s vision and leadership, we’ve made remarkable progress scaling up America’s offshore wind industry – with eight large-scale offshore wind projects now approved.. The New England project continues a surge of momentum that the administration is delivering to grow the American offshore wind industry, power millions of American homes with clean energy, and create good-paying, climate jobs.”
While the government celebrates the 10 GW milestone, they’re facing a race against time to meet its own target. Assuming President Biden wins re-election in November they have to approve at least twice the number of projects that they approved in their first term. These would need to happen in the first half of tenure, assuming each project will realistically take 2-3 years from the point of approval to completion.
As Biden prepares to kick off his re-election campaign, he will be hoping he has done enough to tackle the climate crisis and so get a nod of approval from climate-conscious Americans.