US to create offshore wind ‘centre of excellence’
US to create offshore wind ‘centre of excellence’ | Windpower Monthly
The US Department of Energy (DoE) is establishing an $11.9 million centre of excellence to speed up reliable and fair offshore wind energy deployment and produce a well-educated domestic workforce.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst will lead the Academic Centre for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind (Arrow).
Arrow will receive $4.75 million over five years from the DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office and has also received $4.75 million from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Centre.
The state of Maryland’s energy administration and the state’s Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University are contributing $1 billion. Other universities are contributing $1.4 million for a total budget of $11.9 million.
Arrow has three key goals: create a comprehensive education system for US-based offshore wind professionals; carry out research on infrastructure, atmospheric and ocean conditions, and marine and human ecology to make offshore wind more resilient; and get input from a wide range of offshore wind stakeholders to ensure benefits are shared equitably.
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.