On December 2 and 3, Resources for the Future (RFF) hosted a two-day workshop focused on the challenges and opportunities of offshore wind development and deployment in the United States. The workshop—a timely event, given that President Joe Biden had recently announced a goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030—convened stakeholders across the spectrum of the offshore wind industry, including developers, federal regulators, finance experts, and researchers studying local impacts.
The panels covered topics across the board, including key challenges in establishing this new industry, transmission and grid modernization, local impacts, financing, and risk. Despite many challenges that range from supply-chain issues to a lack of institutions that can help states coordinate in infrastructure planning, the panelists agreed that offshore wind is a vast and largely untapped resource that could greatly benefit the United States as many states and the federal government seek to decarbonize the electricity grid.
Offshore wind has several advantages over land-based renewable energy development. For example, offshore projects are located closer to load centers, given that much of the US population lives near the coasts, whereas most prevalent onshore wind resources may be located far from cities. And even though it provides intermittent power, offshore wind can be a more productive and predictable resource than some onshore renewable resources.