US President Joe Biden has placed high hopes on offshore wind farms, and has been constantly paving for the target of 30GW offshore wind power by 2030, including the drafting of wind farm leases, expansion of the construction area of wind farms, and the decision in accelerating the establishment in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Gulf of Mexico. Tender solutions will be confirmed next year at the earliest.
The US hopes to establish 30GW of offshore wind power by 2030 in order to attain the target of energy transformation and net zero emission, which is expected to introduce 44K job opportunities, as well as yield 33K job opportunities for the supply chain and related industries.
The current offshore wind power plans of the US are mostly centralized along the Northeast Coast of the country, and the government is hoping to extend the range downward along the Atlantic coast to New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, as well as the Gulf of Maine and the Gulf of Mexico, with wind power plans also in Oregon and California. The US Department of the Interior has proposed to unfold an offshore wind power tender in 120K acres off the cost of South and North Carolina, which will supply enough power for more than 500K households.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will finalize the sale plan in early 2022 at the earliest, as well as evaluate the potential in the 30 million acres offshore area in the Gulf of Mexico pertaining to offshore wind power development, which extends westward from Mississippi River to the Texas-Mexico border. However, the Gulf of Mexico is home to the largest offshore petroleum and drilling of natural gas in the US, and a development of offshore wind power and relevant leases in the future would require an environmental evaluation from the BOEM.
Deb Haaland, US secretary of the interior, commented earlier that BOEM plans to unfold the tenders for 7 offshore wind farms in 2025, and is currently refining the procedures steadily to ensure suitability in the development of offshore wind power.
Biden has been accelerating the development of offshore wind power in the US since taking office. He had just approved the first large commercial offshore wind power plant that is the 800MW Vineyard Wind in May, and has begun reviewing more than ten offshore wind power plans in the East Coast, with new development in large offshore wind power plans expected for next week. Soon initiating environmental impact assessment, the Mayflower Wind offshore wind farm of Shell and Ocean Winds contains a capacity of 804MW and 147 units of wind turbines, of which Ocean Winds is a joint venture between EDP (Energías de Portugal) and ENGIE.
(Cover photo source: Unsplash)