Since last November’s presidential election, most of the news headlines surrounding the energy industry have had to do with President Donald Trump’s stated preference for oil and gas exploration off the US coastline and the resurrection of the coal industry.
That has injected worry on the part of those who favor a national move toward renewable energy sources, including offshore wind. Indeed, many states have passed legislation or stated goals that would require they meet renewable energy objectives, which outwardly would seem to place them at odds with the Trump energy agenda.
However, market realities — sharp declines in the cost of offshore wind in Europe, tens of thousand of new clean-energy jobs, and the move toward renewables by US energy producers — may prove to be powerful change agents within the Trump administration.
The federal Bureau of Ocean Management continues to hold lease auctions for tracts of ocean water targeted for potential wind farms along the East Coast from North Carolina to New England. That could include another 400,000 acres south of Martha’s Vineyard following unsolicited applications by two international energy giants, Statoil and PNE Wind. Already, three developers — Deepwater Wind (builder of a recently operational demonstration project off Block Island), DONG Energy (partnered with Eversource) and Vineyard Wind (which recently sold a 50-percent stake to Avangrid Renewables) — are expected to bid on the sale of 1,600 MW of power to Massachusetts utilities.
Some of the turbine blades at the Siemens blade manufacturing center in Hull, England, where offshore wind is powering economic growth.
In addition, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, long a friend of the oil and gas industry while he was Texas governor, also promoted clean energy policies there.
in his nearly 15 years as governor, Texas wind power generation climbed from just over 100 megawatts to 11,000 megawatts by the time he left office, according to the Washington Times. Today, Texas gets nearly 14 percent of its power from onshore wind.
Further, a just-released, highly detailed study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of Perry’s Energy Department, recently assessed the economic potential of some 7,000 potential sites for offshore wind in the US.
Not surprisingly, it found that the economic potential for the Northeast — especially Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine — is the highest in the nation due to the close proximity of dependable offshore winds and the existing high price structure of energy generation and transmission from New England’s energy suppliers.
The report is anything but easy reading, but you will come away knowing that the US has the potential to harvest huge quantities of offshore wind in an environment of ever-lowering costs achieved by anticipated technological gains and an established supply chain.
And here in New Bedford, we will be right at the center of a new, clean-energy industry that the Trump administration ought to love — if only for the 34,000 jobs it is expected to create over the next 30 years.