It’s Time for the East Coast to Look Offshore

The powerful wind blowing along and off the shores of the East Coast contains enough energy to provide more electricity than the region uses in a year, from Miami to D.C., up to New York and Boston. 

Gideon Weissman

Former Policy Analyst, Frontier Group

Stroll along Boston’s waterfront and you can expect to smell salty sea air, to walk up and down historic 19th-century piers – and to nearly get knocked off your feet by strong gusts of ocean wind. I’ve been walking and biking along the shores of Boston since I was a kid, but what I wouldn’t have guessed back then is that the powerful wind blowing along and off the shores of the East Coast contains enough energy to provide more electricity than the region uses in a year, from Miami to D.C., up to New York and Boston.

In fact, based on energy potential data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the East Coast could support enough offshore wind power to generate more than 5 times as much electricity as it uses in a given year.[1] On a state by state basis, offshore wind potential looks even more impressive. Massachusetts could generate nearly 15 times as much offshore wind electricity as it consumes; New York, four times; North Carolina, nine times; Maine, with an endless coast and low electricity use, could generate nearly 53 times as much electricity as it consumes every year.

Offshore wind is a proven technology that has already demonstrated its ability to power a modern economy; there are nearly 12 GW of offshore wind installed off the coast of Europe, with more wind turbines coming online all the time. Now, finally, offshore wind is coming to the U.S., with construction underway on America’s first offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

An even bigger step could be around the corner, as Massachusetts lawmakers consider an offshore wind carveout that would require the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind over the next ten years. If history is any indication, a carveout will be a good way to pave the way forward for offshore wind. Similar requirements for renewable energy in states across the country helped lead the way to plummeting costs and skyrocketing installations for solar energy and onshore wind; and a recent study asserts that if Massachusetts builds 2,000 MW of wind energy over ten years, over that time the cost of wind electricity would fall by a third.[pdf]

The last year has proven that it’s possible for federal, state and local officials to pull off the sometimes complex collaboration and cooperation required to put turbines offshore. Now it’s time for the East Coast to step up the pace, and start tapping into the nearly limitless supply of clean, renewable energy, blowing right off of its shores.

    

[1] NREL offshore potential data here. State electricity consumption data here.

Authors

Gideon Weissman

Former Policy Analyst, Frontier Group