Financial results | Narrowed market focus | Turbine arms race | Geopolitical events
Financial results | Narrowed market focus | Turbine arms race | Geopolitical events | Windpower Monthly
This time in the news review: Major Western wind companies have released quarterly and full-year results but what do they tell us about the overall health of the wind industry?
Meanwhile, several wind giants have announced – in the wake of their financial results – that they will narrow their focus on markets, but what is the strategy and what does it mean for the markets not chosen?
Following their joint award of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering last month, wind industry pioneers Henrik Stiesdal and Andrew Garrad told Windpower Monthly that the so-called turbine ‘arms race’ must stop – but is anyone listening, especially developers?
Finally, we ask our panellists how they think geopolitical events – such as Russia’s war in Ukraine, the continuing attacks on merchant shipping in the red sea and Donald Trump becoming the presumptive Republican nominee in the forthcoming US presidential elections – are affecting the wind industry.
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This episode was produced by Nav Pal and Inga Marsden
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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.