Obama Administration Unveils Vision for Offshore Wind

The federal government on Friday unveiled its vision for wind farms off of nearly every U.S. coastline by 2050, in an effort to generate 86 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind — enough zero-carbon power for more than 23 million homes.

The National Offshore Wind Strategy, part of the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, calls for major investments in offshore wind farm construction now that North America’s first offshore wind farm has been completed off of Rhode Island and 11 areas of the Atlantic Coast have been leased for future wind development.

The Obama administration has made offshore wind a major part of the U.S. strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Climate Agreement in an effort to keep global warming from exceeding 2°C (3.6°F).

Until now Europe has led the world in building offshore wind farms, but the U.S. had not built any until this year.  The Obama administration and the wind power industry see offshore wind as a huge untapped source of zero-carbon electricity, which, if fully developed, has the ability to generate twice the electricity the U.S. produced in 2015.

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