Biden Administration Issues Roadmap for Boosting Atlantic Offshore Wind Power Transmission
The Biden Administration has issued a comprehensive roadmap to accelerate offshore wind transmission in the U.S. Atlantic region. The action plan, released today but the Departments of the Interior and Energy, aims to help unlock the region’s renewable energy potential, strengthen the domestic supply chain, and create union jobs. The plan outlines immediate actions to connect first-generation of offshore wind projects to the electric grid and long-term efforts to support transmission over the next few decades, providing for more efficient energy delivery. The plan sets out short, medium, and long-term goals along with recommendations for establishing collaborative bodies, updating transmission planning, addressing costs, and convening with states, industry, and federal agencies to plan for an offshore transmission network. It also suggests standardizing HVDC technology requirements and establishing a national testing and certification center for HVDC substations. The plan is part of the administration’s goal to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and achieve a 100% clean electric grid by 2035. The Energy Department and Atlantic states have already started collaborating on the formation of an Offshore Wind Transmission State Collaborative to develop a shared vision on policy and coordination for offshore transmission development. The Action Plan was developed based on the Atlantic Offshore Wind Transmission Study, which is due to be released soon by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It was also informed by a series of convening workshops with subject matter experts and decision makers from Tribal nations, state governments, and regional transmission operators, taking place from April 2022 to March 2023.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.