Offshore wind workforce a weak link in plan to build out renewables
A national push toward offshore wind energy could create thousands of well-paying domestic jobs in Louisiana and elsewhere, according to clean energy advocates and President Joe Biden, who wants to establish 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.
But it’s unlikely there will be enough trained and certified workers to fill those positions, and that could harm the development of the offshore wind industry, according to Jeremy Stefek, workforce and economic development researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who recently assessed the offshore wind workforce.
His research found that, to meet the president’s goals, the offshore wind industry needs more than 44,000 workers in offshore wind energy by 2030 and nearly 33,000 additional workers in the communities to support offshore wind energy activity.
Currently there are fewer than 1,000 workers in the country’s offshore wind sector, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In response to the expected shortage, the University of New Orleans announced its creation of the Louisiana Wind Energy Hub last year, and this fall will award five scholarships for the hub’s inaugural curriculum, which focuses on things like offshore wind structure design, project management and ocean engineering.
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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.