The Joe Biden White House announced on Monday an ambitious plan to dramatically boost offshore wind power in the United States by 2030, encouraging the construction over the next nine years of offshore projects capable of generating enough electricity - 30 gigawatts- for more than 10 million American households, with the ultimate goal of fighting climate change.
"We are ready for
rock-and-roll,
" said the National Climate Adviser, Gina McCarthy, who wanted to make it clear that the ultimate purpose is focused both on providing the US with clean energy and creating jobs. .
According to McCarthy, offshore wind energy will generate "thousands of well-paying jobs."
"It's about creating jobs in the ocean, in the ports of our cities and in our nation," he emphasized.
The Biden Administration is seriously committed to the United States counteracting climate change, promoting renewable energy, and eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the electrical grid by 2035. While in Europe, offshore wind power (sometimes called
offshore
) has been integrated into the high seas landscape of European coasts for decades, in the United States the trend has been very different and this technology is very underdeveloped.
Currently there are only two small clusters, or farms, of turbines operating near the State of Rhode Island and Virginia.
"President Biden is convinced that we have a tremendous opportunity in front of us," stated the National Climate Advisor.
"And nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than it is in offshore wind," McCarthy said.
The project will potentially attract more than $ 12 billion in annual capital investment and create 44,000 direct jobs for installing turbines along the eastern coasts of the United States and 33,000 indirect jobs.
"We are talking about the manufacture of giant turbines that will be manufactured in the United States," McCarthy reported during the event at the White House.
“We are talking about steel and cement that are manufactured right here.
We are talking about these special ships that need to install these huge structures with the American flag and built in American ports, ”concluded the National Climate Adviser.
The White House also announced this Monday, through its advisor, its intention to prepare an environmental analysis for the project known as Ocean Wind, off New Jersey, which would make it the third commercial-scale offshore wind project in the United States. .
Ocean Wind, 15 miles off the southern coast of New Jersey, could produce about 1,100 megawatts a year at full capacity, enough to power 500,000 homes.
One of the first proposals that existed for wind energy produced offshore in the United States was on Cape Cod, in the State of Massachusetts, a plan that died after the many objections and protests of the wealthy residents of the area who considered that the views of its coast was ruined by turbines.
This March, the Administration Biden stepped forward when implementing its plan to approve an environmental report for which will be the first
farm
- scale production of offshore wind energy off the coast well off Martha's Vineyard , also in Massachusetts.
The project suffered numerous delays under the Administration of Donald Trump, who on numerous occasions mocked
offshore
wind power
as a very expensive way - and one that also caused the death of all kinds of birds - to make electricity.
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