Now that President Biden’s administration has thrown its support behind a wind farm off the coast of New Jersey – and similar ones from Massachusetts to North Carolina it’s clear turbines twice the size of the Statue of Liberty are about to rise in the Atlantic at a pace we never have seen. Earlier this spring, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced the formal environmental .
When U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration approved the country’s first major offshore wind farm this month, it billed the move as the start of a new clean…
By Isla Binnie, Susanna Twidale and Nichola Groom
May 27 (Reuters) – When U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration approved the country’s first major offshore wind farm this month, it billed the move as the start of a new clean energy industry that by the end of the decade will create over 75,000 U.S. jobs.
Industry executives and analysts do not contest that claim, but they make a clarification: For the first several years at least, most of the manufacturing jobs stemming from the U.S. offshore wind industry will be in Europe.
Offshore wind project developers plan to ship massive blades, towers and other components for at least the initial wave of U.S. projects from factories in France, Spain and elsewhere before potentially opening up manufacturing plants on U.S. shores, according to Reuters interviews with executives from three of the world’s leading wind turbine makers.
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The GE-Alstom Block Island Wind Farm stands in the water off Block Island, Rhode Island, on Sept, 14, 2016.
(Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In January 2016, Trident Winds, a small, Seattle-based wind company, submitted an unsolicited application to the U.S. Department of the Interior, laying out its aspirations to build a 1-gigawatt wind farm off California’s central coast.
The scale was ambitious, especially for the United States. But Trident Winds’ chief executive officer, Alla Weinstein, sensed an opportunity.
“Effectively, that’s what kick-started the whole discussion on offshore wind in California,” Weinstein said of the application.
Years later, California’s waters still have no finalized leases for the development of any offshore wind farms. Instead, the state’s market has been bogged down by politics and technological hurdles.