America's Offshore Wind Potential is Huge but Untapped

A new analysis "shows that over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential is available along the U.S. coastline," capable of fulfilling up to 25% of U.S. energy demand in 2050. (And it could also add $1.8 trillion in economy-boosting investment, while employing up to 390,000 workers.) This new analysis comes from Berkeley researchers, who worked with nonprofit clean energy research firm GridLab and climate policy think tank Energy Innovation, reports the Verge:The Biden administration has committed to halving the nation's emissions by the end of the decade and has plans to source electricity completely from carbon pollution-free energy by 2035. Adding to that urgency, U.S. electricity demand is forecast to nearly triple by 2050, according to the Berkeley report. On top of a growing economy, the clean energy transition means electrifying more vehicles and homes - all of which put more stress on the power grid unless more power supply comes online at a similar pace. To meet that demand and hit its climate goals, the report says the U.S. has to add 27 gigawatts of offshore wind and 85 GW of land-based wind and solar each year between 2035 and 2050. That timeline might still seem far away, but it's a big escalation of the Biden administration's current goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. Europe, with an electricity grid about 70% the size of the U.S., already has about as much offshore wind capacity as the Biden administration hopes to build up by the end of the decade. Right now, wind energy makes up just over 10% of the U.S. electricity mix, and nearly all of that comes from land-based turbines... For now, the U.S. has just two small wind farms off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. Construction started on the foundations for the nation's first commercial-scale wind farm off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in June... Project costs have gone up with higher interest rates and rising prices for key commodities like steel, Heatmap reports. That's led to power purchase agreements falling through for some projects in early development, including plans in Rhode Island for an 884-megawatt wind farm that alone would have added more than 20 times as much generation capacity as the U.S. has today from offshore wind. Developers are struggling to make projects profitable without passing costs on to consumers... The study found a modest 2 to 3 percent increase in wholesale electricity costs with ambitious renewable energy deployment. But renewable energy costs have fallen so dramatically in the past that the researchers think those costs could wind up being smaller over time. The report points out that wind energy complements solar, by producing the most wind energy right when demand is peaking (in the summertime on the West Coast, and during the winter on the East Coast).

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