<\/div>\n
Related article<\/span> Activists helped shut down this oil refinery in Philadelphia. Now locals wonder what\u2019s next<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But offshore wind is increasingly Trump-proof, according to a top White House climate official, wind CEOs and an industry analyst. Too much progress has been made to be fully undone by a second Trump administration. <\/p>\n
Still, White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi warned that for the industry to mature and be successful, it needs a friendly administration willing to push it along. <\/p>\n
The Biden administration set an ambitious goal for offshore wind energy: to deploy 30 gigawatts by 2030. <\/p>\n
Zaidi is \u201cvery confident\u201d they will meet the target. But industry analysts aren\u2019t so sure. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not bullish,\u201d Huntington said. \u201cOur latest forecast has them getting about half of that \u2013 15 gigawatts. Unless a lot of projects get approved, and Europe gives us a whole bunch of installation vessels, I don\u2019t see how we\u2019re ramping up to that.\u201d <\/p>\n
The administration recently has approved enough projects to eventually get 10 gigawatts of power on the grid, enough to power nearly 4 million homes. And the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans to hold up to four lease sales this year, including ones in the Gulf of Maine and off the coast of Oregon, which are likely contenders for the massive floating turbines industry experts say the world should be moving toward. <\/p>\n
Still, it will take years for those approved projects to come online, a timeline Huntington and offshore wind CEOs say speaks to the continuing challenges US projects face. Permitting a single project can still take years because of the multiple federal, state and local hoops developers must jump through. <\/p>\n
Ordering equipment is another challenge. The US supply chain for offshore wind is still being built; therefore, projects are turning to European manufacturers to get blades, gearboxes, and other components. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s really only three suppliers that are serving the US market\u201d for wind turbines and the high-capacity electric cables that carry electricity back to shore, said Clint Plummer, head of New York-based company Rise Light & Power, who was formerly at Danish wind giant \u00d8rsted. \u201cAnd their lead times seem to continue to get longer.\u201d <\/p>\n
Compounding the problem is the fact that the US industry is so underdeveloped compared to Europe and Asia, pushing US projects to the back of the line. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the US is more nascent in the development of our industry than either of those two mega markets, it simply means that we have less influence than those other regions in being able to get the attention of the manufacturers,\u201d Plummer said. <\/p>\n
Friendly state and federal governments<\/h2>\n
Despite persistent headwinds, the biggest change over the past year has been that the Northeast is signing up for the electricity wind farms will generate. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a simple explanation for that: New England and Northeast states want to make their own energy, according to Pedro Azagra Bl\u00e1zquez, the CEO of offshore wind company Avangrid, which is developing wind farms off the coasts of Massachusetts and New York. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
Related article<\/span> Ocean heat is driving a global coral bleaching event, and it could be the worst on record<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n New York has been aggressively pursuing offshore wind projects, rebidding previously canceled projects and accepting those projects at higher prices. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that that these projects that were in so much trouble were rebid and accepted at higher prices was a really positive sign for the industry,\u201d Huntington said. But it will also mean electricity from wind will initially come at a higher cost, given supply-chain constraints and high interest rates. <\/p>\n
Bl\u00e1zquez and Plummer give the Biden administration high marks for setting an ambitious goal for offshore wind and trying to ease federal permitting for the projects. But they\u2019re also not overly worried about what a Trump administration could mean for the industry. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur obligation is to work well with any administration, because what is clear is these investments bring economic development, they bring jobs,\u201d Bl\u00e1zquez said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
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After a disastrous year marked by high costs, accusations of environmental harm and project cancellations in 2023, there\u2019s a sense the US offshore wind industry is on a rebound. There are now two dozen turbines spinning off the East Coast \u2013 a number set to more than double by the end of the year. New <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}