Posted on September 18, 2024
Offshore wind power is coming to Maryland, and with it, jobs. Earlier this month, the Biden administration approved Baltimore-based US Wind’s project to install wind turbines about 10 miles off the coast of Ocean City.
The offshore wind farm could generate more than two gigawatts of wind energy and power more than 718,000 homes, according to the Department of the Interior.
President Joe Biden said in a statement that the wind energy industry had been “struggling to gain a foothold” in the years before he took office.
“From manufacturing and shipbuilding to port operations and construction, this industry will support tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs, provide clean, reliable energy to homes and businesses, strengthen our electric grid against outages, and help reduce pollution — all while protecting biodiversity and marine ecosystems,” the president said.
Maryland Energy Administration Director Paul Pinsky called the Biden administration’s action “an important step forward in the effort to bring clean, renewable energy production to Maryland’s coast.”
“The announcement underscores the careful, comprehensive and collaborative environmental analysis that has gone into these projects,” Pinsky said in a statement.
The Maryland project is the 10th commercial-scale offshore wind project approved by the Biden administration. Together, the projects are projected to generate 15 gigawatts of clean energy, half of Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.
The Maryland project includes up to 114 wind turbines, four offshore substation platforms and a weather tower. The US Wind project will have three phases, two of which, called MarWin and Momentum Wind, have already received offshore renewable energy certificates from the state.
Power is projected to begin flowing in December 2028 from the first phase of the project. The final project is expected to be completed in late 2027 or early 2028, according to the plan submitted by US Wind.
The approval is a victory for Maryland environmental groups and the state government, which have been working toward offshore wind in the state for about 10 years.
The Maryland legislature passed a series of bills, starting in 2013, to get offshore wind projects up and running.
The state set a goal in 2023, through the Offshore Wind Energy Resources Promotion Act, to generate 8.5 gigawatts of power from offshore wind by 2031.
This goal has hit some roadblocks along the way, including the withdrawal of planned offshore wind projects by Denmark-based Ørsted in January.
US Wind won the competitive lease sale for the 46,970 acres of federal ocean waters in 2014.
“By moving away from a reliance on dirty fossil fuel energy and building renewable energy, Marylanders will be able to breathe cleaner air and benefit from new clean energy jobs,” Maryland Sierra Club Chapter Director Josh Tulkin said in a statement Thursday.
Jamie DeMarco, federal campaigns coordinator for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said in an interview with Capital News Service that the Maryland wind farm is a milestone in advancing offshore energy generation in Maryland.
“It’s a big task to build a complete machine to deploy offshore wind energy, but once that machine is built, it will be able to hum along and generate new domestic power — and clean energy that will help us clean the air and meet our climate goals,” DeMarco said.
Offshore wind turbines have been coming online all over the East Coast, DeMarco said, but this will be the first operational offshore wind facility in Maryland.
Environmental advocates aren’t the only ones celebrating. Union officials are touting the jobs that will be created by the wind farm.
Nearly 2,680 jobs a year for seven years could be created during the development and construction phase of the wind farm, according to the Interior Department.
US Wind’s planned permanent offshore wind component production facility, called Sparrows Point Steel in Sparrows Point, Baltimore (the former headquarters of Bethlehem Steel), is expected to create jobs for steelworkers.
