Biden Administration in a Resolute Push To Expand Offshore Wind Capacities

The White House unveiled an ambitious plan to expand wind farms along the East Coast and give “wind in the back” to the U.S. fledgling offshore wind industry.

The plan is to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade.

This would be enough to power more than 10 million American homes and eliminate 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the equation.

To achieve that, the Washington Post reports that the Biden administration will speed up permitting for projects off the East Coast, invest in R&D, provide low-interest loans to industry, and fund necessary changes to the U.S. ports.

“We are ready to rock-and-roll,” national climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters in a phone call Monday. She framed the effort as being as much about jobs as about clean energy. Offshore wind power will generate “thousands of good-paying union jobs. This is all about creating great jobs in the ocean and in our port cities and in our heartland,” she said.

This initiative is a major breakthrough for the United States, a country that now operates only one offshore wind project, generating 30 megawatts, off Rhode Island.

New offshore wind farms will be established in the waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.