The Biden administration announced Monday it is establishing a target to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, enough to power more than 10 million homes and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
The offshore wind industry is nascent in the United States, but the administration is aiming to jump-start it as part of its agenda to create high-paying, union-backed jobs in clean energy.
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“President Biden believes we have an enormous opportunity in front of us to not only address the threats of climate change, but use it as a chance to create millions of good-paying, union jobs that will fuel America’s economic recovery, rebuild the middle class, and make sure we bounce back from the crises we face. Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind,” said White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy.
To compete with Europe, where offshore wind is dominant and benefits from government subsidies, the Biden administration said it would speed permitting for projects off the East Coast, invest in research and development, provide $3 billion in low-interest loans to the industry, and improve port infrastructure.
In recent years, the federal government has sold the rights to develop offshore wind projects along the East Coast, and states such as New York and New Jersey looking to fulfill aggressive clean electricity mandates have committed to buying the power. But so far, Block Island, a small, 30-megawatt wind farm off the Rhode Island coast, and Dominion’s 12-megawatt project near Virginia are the nation’s only operating offshore wind farms.
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The Biden administration’s Interior Department is also moving toward approving Vineyard Wind, slated to be the first large-scale offshore wind project in the U.S. The 800-megawatt wind farm, planned off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, is expected to provide enough power for more than 400,000 homes.
