Biden Admin Plans Major Offshore Wind Expansion

The Interior Department will sell offshore wind leases off both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico by 2025, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.

The seven lease sales are part of Biden's plan to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy in the next nine years and could create up to 77,000 jobs — the U.S. currently generates just 2MW of offshore wind energy.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of DOI, officially approved the 800MW Vineyard Wind project earlier this year and has nine additional projects currently under review.

Filling those 77,000 jobs will be a massive undertaking but Billy Vietze and his union are ready. "Everybody knows there's a finite amount of fossil fuels, and burning it is no good for our environment," Vietze, currently training to work on the Vineyard Wind project, told E&E news. "This is reliable, clean, renewable energy that can help support our country as we go on and provide a good future for our kids."

14 October 2021

EcoWatch