Boom or bust? | US offshore wind could be left standing by turbocharged onshore network - Recharge
Boom or bust? | US offshore wind could be left standing by turbocharged onshore network | Recharge
Offshore wind off American coastlines could reach over 250GW by mid-century and provide 8% of the nation’s total power – or fall well short of its full promise and end up a sidenote in the nation's energy mix, a study by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found.
In its recently published paper in the journal Nature Energy, NREL asserted that the sector’s strong policy backing and capacity to generate giga-scale renewable energy in spatially constrained and densely populated Northeast put it on track for 30GW-35GW by 2035 and 130GW by 2050, but multiple variables could dramatically affect this outcome.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: wind
Decades of government support for the development of wind energy has resulted in lower costs and a rapidly growing share of electricity generated by wind turbines. Wind in 2019 accounted for 7.3 percent of electrical generation, surpassing for the first time hydropower at 7.0 percent.