From New Media Project: With jumpstart from Biden administration, New York offshore wind is officially “open for business”

By Elana Knopp

Last week, the Biden administration pulled the trigger on offshore wind with a bold infrastructure plan to rapidly deploy large-scale offshore wind projects, catalyze the domestic supply chain and create thousands of union jobs.

With the announcement by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) of a new Wind Energy Area in the New York Bight—an area of shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast— comes the potential of 25,000 development and construction jobs between 2022 and 2030, as well as an additional 7,000 jobs in communities supported by this development. The lease area also has the potential to support up to 4,000 operations and maintenance jobs annually, and approximately 2,000 community jobs in the longer term.

The New York Bight is adjacent to the largest metropolitan population center in the U.S., home to more than 20 million people and a sizable workforce that has been waiting on this news since BOEM indicated its intent to open the area in 2018. The next step for the federal agency will be the publication of a Proposed Sale Notice, followed by a formal public comment period and a lease sale in late 2021 or early 2022.

“I think we’ve seen the prioritization of the New York Bight in this administration, and with Amanda Lefton, who’s a native New Yorker heading up BOEM now,” Mariah Dignan, Long Island Organizer at Climate Jobs New York (CJNY), told NPM. “We were all hoping and looking for this review of these areas for three years, and after really looking at and considering coexistence with the ocean users and doing due diligence, we were able to see this happen. I think it’s an exciting next step, and it really provides more confidence in the offshore wind industry that the U.S.--and especially New York--is open for business with these additional wind energy areas, and that there’s going to be a real pipeline of projects here.”

The Empire State got a major jumpstart on offshore wind in 2019 with the enactment of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which established aggressive, legally binding targets to completely transition the state’s economy off fossil fuels. The law incorporates significant renewables targets, including 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035.

Aligned with these targets is a shared goal from the Departments of Interior (DOI), Energy (DOE), and Commerce (DOC) to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030, triggering more than USD 12b per year in capital investment in projects on both U.S. coasts. It will also create tens of thousands of 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.

BOEM now plans to advance new lease sales and complete review of at least 16 Construction and Operations Plans (COPs) by 2025, representing more than 19 GW of offshore wind energy.

“You can see a real prioritization from BOEM and from this administration with the multitude of announcements--the 30 GW by 2030 initiative, prioritization of port infrastructure investment to develop a domestic supply chain, making sure that that’s American steel in our waters, the vast research and development funding,” Dignan said. “President Biden is really putting the wind at our backs now, so it’s time to drive it home and make sure these projects move forward.”

BOEM has posted a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for Orsted ’s 1,100 MW Ocean Wind farm in New Jersey, putting it in line to become the third commercial-scale offshore wind project in the U.S. The agency previously announced environmental reviews for Vineyard Wind's 800 MW project off the coast of Massachusetts and Orsted’s 132 MW South Fork Wind farm off Long Island and anticipates initiating environmental reviews for up to 10 additional projects later this year.

Ramping it up

Meeting the nation's 2030 offshore wind target will spur significant supply chain benefits, including new port upgrade investments totaling more than USD 500m. Up to two new U.S. factories for each major wind farm component will be needed, including wind turbine nacelles, blades, towers, foundations and subsea cables, and additional cumulative demand of more than seven million tons of steel—equivalent to four years of output for a typical U.S. steel mill. It will also mean the construction of up to six specialized turbine installation vessels in U.S. shipyards, each representing an investment between USD 250m and 500m.

“It’s incredible to be listening to a White House press briefing and hear the words 'good union jobs' repeated over and over again,” Dignan said. “We have this reprioritization with this new administration. Biden said that he is a union guy, that unions built the middle class, and it is about time that we begin seeing and reaping the benefits of that. The President is really setting the tone here, so now it ’s on in the labor movement to go and empower our members to help make it happen.”

Labor organizations like North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) lauded the infrastructure proposal, calling it “broad in scope and robust in funding,” also citing it as the “last best chance” for the U.S.to remain a leading superpower and counter China’s emergence in the global economy.

“With this level of investment, it will further enable NABTU to train women, communities of color, veterans, and the formerly incarcerated for construction careers through pre-apprenticeship and registered apprenticeship training programs,” NABTU Pres. Sean McGarvey said in a released statement. “None of this would be possible without the Biden-Harris administration’s already strong commitment for labor standards on any infrastructure project receiving federal financial support, including ones in the clean energy industry."

New York recently upped the ante in its quest to establish itself as the nation's offshore wind leader with its second offshore wind procurement, in which NYSERDA selected Equinor's Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind projects for contract negotiations. Together, these projects total nearly 2,500 MW, enough to power 1.3 million homes.

With these awards, New York now has five offshore wind projects in active development – the largest offshore wind pipeline in the nation totaling more than 4,300 MW and representing nearly 50 percent of the capacity needed to meet the state's offshore wind goal of 9,000 MW by 2035.

The South Fork, Sunrise Wind, Empire Wind 1 & 2, and Beacon Wind projects will eventually power over 2.4 million homes, create more than 6,800 jobs and pump USD 12.1b into the regional economy.

"Long Islanders and New Yorkers--we’re ready," Dignan said. "We are gearing up and ready to make this a reality for our region. We have the most well-trained and safe workforce that there is, especially in the New York labor movement. We have the trades and skills developed and ready to go. What we are looking forward to figuring out with the state and industry is getting more concrete job numbers so that we can start upscaling our apprenticeship programs in the building trades that really show people how you earn while you learn a trade. We could start scaling up those programs so that when we’re ready to go in the short few years to getting steel in the water, that we have the numbers and the workforce ready to do that.”

With the federal offshore wind goal of 30 GW just nine years away, CJNY has hit the ground running, collaborating with NYSERDA, the Dept. of Labor, and local labor unions to accelerate education and training programs as the state readies to deploy a massive workforce.

“It’s not only about the thousands of jobs-- it’s about the quality of those jobs and treating workers with respect and dignity,” Dignan said. “I think that’s been long lost in our society. That is our central tenet in the labor movement--to raise the standard of living for all working people by providing good, family-sustaining wages with commensurate benefits, protecting our workers, making sure that they have access to healthcare. I think we are really starting to see a shift that this is how we should create this clean energy economy. We’re at the center, quite literally, with this New York Bight offshore wind industry, and we’re extremely anxious to work with the state, with industry, with all of our partners to make it happen.