In the constellation of renewable energy technologies that the U.S. has sought to deploy in order to battle climate change, offshore wind has had perhaps the rockiest path in recent years. In 2023, high interest rates and the global supply chain shocks brought a slew of developments across the country to an end. Even without these macroeconomic obstacles, offshore wind is a mammoth undertaking. It’s difficult to overstate the sheer scale of the endeavor that is the construction of an offshore wind farm. The largest turbines are the length of football fields and require specially built ships to transport them.
If offshore wind can take off anywhere, it’s New England, whose waters provide the highest wind capacity factor (the amount of energy a turbine can produce over time) in the continental U.S. In October 2023, three states — Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — signed a first-of-its-kind multistate procurement agreement to collectively share the costs and benefits of adding new offshore wind generation. The vision behind the plan was to reduce the cost per megawatt of the electricity ge... Read more
