US Launches 30GW Offshore Wind Project - White House

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2021) The United States hopes to create some 77,000 jobs over the next decade with its $12 billion 30-Gigawatt (30,000 megawatts) offshore wind energy project that will meet demand of some 10 million homes, the White House announced Monday.

"The Departments of Interior, Energy, and Commerce are announcing a shared goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the United States by 2030, while protecting biodiversity and promoting ocean co-use," the White House said in a mission statement. "Meeting this target will trigger more than $12 billion per year in capital investment in projects on both US coasts, create tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs, with more than 44,000 workers employed in offshore wind by 2030 and nearly 33,000 additional jobs in communities supported by offshore wind activity."

The project will generate enough power to meet the demand of more than 10 million American homes for a year, and avoid 78 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions, the statement added.

Renewable energies are at the core of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" plan to steer America out of the coronavirus pandemic into new areas of growth that will create jobs by the thousands while drastically slashing the CO2 footprint in the world's largest economy. His administration is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels oil and gas to halve the US rate of emissions by 2030 under the US target for the Paris climate agreement.

"Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind," White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in the statement issued Monday. "This commitment to a new, untapped industry will create pathways to the middle class for people from all backgrounds and communities."

Meeting the 2030 target on wind energy will involve new port upgrade investments totaling more than $500 million, the White House said.

It detailed the construction of one to two new US factories for each major windfarm component including wind turbine nacelles, blades, towers, foundations, and subsea cables; and additional cumulative demand of more than 7 million tons of steel ” equivalent to 4 years of output for a typical US steel mill.

The plan also involves the building of four to six specialized turbine installation vessels in US shipyards, each representing an investment between $250 and $500 million, the White House said.

The emission reforms have, however, drawn Biden into a political and legal battle with the attorney generals of 14 US states that have filed a lawsuit against his moratorium on lease renewals on oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters.