Off shore wind projects boosted after President Biden teams up with local officials
DELMARVA – As part of the plan to make the nation’s grid carbon-free President Joe Biden announced a major move for offshore wind power, a move that some officials are calling historical.
By the year 2030, President Biden plans to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power. That will give 10 million homes electricity and support 77,000 jobs.
“It’s clean and it’s real and it’s continuous,” says President Joe Biden.
President Joe Biden is talking about the clean, renewable energy source of offshore wind. This comes after the joint effort by federal and state governments to launch a new partnership that will ease the way offshore wind is developed.
“Building up a supply chain of American, small, medium-sized businesses that will do the work that goes into building an offshore wind farm or the collection of an offshore wind farm that are planned for the East coast in particular,” says Sam Salustro with the Business Network for Offshore Wind.
Sam Salustro breaks down what it takes to push a project like this even further.
“Building an industry from scratch is what we’re trying to do with offshore wind, it requires time, energy, and a lot of education, and instead of building a new industry state by state, having this domestic national focus is really good news, not only good news for Maryland but all companies,” says Salustro.
President Biden says there couldn’t be a better time than now to create these resources.
“I think we’re at a place where we’ve reached an exciting point where it seems like there’s been a coalescence of the notion that, you know, alternative energy makes sense and wind is a gigantic piece of it…we’re going to deepen our partnership on offshore wind as well as climate overall and create jobs, good jobs, union jobs,” says President Joe Biden.
After getting federal attention, what does this mean for the Eastern Shore? Brady Walker with Orsted tells us what the next steps could look like.
“Within the next couple of years, really significant steps forward on actual on shore construction activity related to the wind farm itself…the wind farm right now is slated to achieve commercial operations by the end of 2026,” says Brady Walker with Orsted.
The Business Network for offshore wind says this is important that it is happening now. Many people on Delmarva will have new job opportunities along with cleaner power in their area. Along with their offshore wind initiatives, Orsted will also be working with local organizations to invest in workforce development and stem scholarship programs. Officials tell us there is something for everyone in this industry and a local based workforce will strengthen the program.
