President Joe Biden touted offshore wind’s “progress” on his watch on Thursday despite the fact that the industry has struggled considerably with elevated inflation and interest rates.
Biden released an official statement Thursday celebrating his administration’s tenth approval of an offshore wind development and touting signature policies that have incentivized developers to build new projects. However, Biden neglected to mention that the industry writ large has been plagued by high inflation, elevated interest rates, logistical snares and supply chain snags, all of which have combined to help force developers to postpone or cancel projects, or attempt to renegotiate key contracts.
“When I came into office, the United States had zero approved offshore wind projects in federal waters, and the industry was struggling to gain a foothold,” Biden’s statement reads. “But now, following my Administration’s investments in our clean energy future, the private sector has mobilized and the federal government has approved ten offshore wind projects – enough to power more than five million homes and equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve our goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.”
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“From manufacturing and shipbuilding to port operations and construction, this industry will support tens of thousands of good-paying and union jobs, provide reliable clean power to homes and businesses, strengthen our power grid against outages, and help reduce pollution – all while protecting biodiversity and marine ecosystems,” the president’s statement continues. “We will continue to partner with industry, Tribes, ocean users, and other stakeholders to support supply chains that are Made in America, incentivize union-built projects, and continue seizing opportunities for additional clean energy technologies.”
The Biden administration has opened up billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the industry in pursuit of its 2030 goal for the offshore wind industry, with the Inflation Reduction Act — Biden’s signature climate bill — providing lucrative tax credit subsidies to qualifying developers.
However, more offshore wind capacity has been cancelled or postponed than is currently online or pending, according to data analysis by Ed O’Donnell, formerly a nuclear engineer and now a principal at a New Jersey-based consultancy called Whitestrand Consulting. Moreover, the American Clean Power Association stated in a July report that there will only actually be 14 gigawatts of operational offshore wind capacity online by 2030, and that the 30 gigawatt threshold may not be met until 2033.
Ørsted, a major offshore wind developer, pulled the plug on two major projects off the New Jersey coast in October 2023, and similar delays or cancellations have affected projects that were slated for operation off the coasts of Maryland and New York. In July, a defective blade on one of Vineyard Wind’s turbines broke and released considerable amounts of debris into the Atlantic Ocean, forcing the temporary closure of several beaches on nearby Nantucket, Massachusetts, when fiberglass shards began washing up on the shore.
“There’s no economic rationale for offshore wind as a market-based supplier of power, there are a lot of issues with it, but it won’t survive,” O’Donnell previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s only surviving through subsidies in the form of massive federal tax credits and offshore rate subsidies from the different states and their ratepayers. So, this is why they’re struggling, because those things have economic consequences, and there’s a limit to how much of this can be passed on to taxpayers and ratepayers.”
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: US Government Work-Department of Energy/Flickr)
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