The American Floating Offshore Wind Technical Summit (Afloat) is taking place in Portland this week. Stakeholders, investors and developers from all over the world are discussing the future of floating wind power in the U.S. and, specifically, the Gulf of Maine.
Former President Trump has said on the campaign trail he'd like to put a stop to any offshore wind projects on his first day in office, if elected. Whether he'd be able to do that, either through executive order, as he claims, or through the federal court system, as some experts warn, is uncertain. But several attendees at the summit on Tuesday said they're not worried about having to slow down nascent projects.
Jay Borkland, Director of Renewables at Avangrid, works on the northern New England supply chain for offshore wind. Avangrid, a Connecticut-based energy company, invests in renewable energy, and is one of the main partners on the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project near Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts. Borkland said on Tuesday that the floating wind industry will take years to mature.
"To keep the lights on, to deal with climate change, we're going to have to develop this industry over time, and so there may be some speed bumps along the way with different administrations but I definitely don't see the election as fatal to the development of offshore wind in general and floating wind in particular," he said.
Jonathan Kennedy, the chief development officer of Clean Energy Terminals, noted that there are plenty of strategies developers and investors can follow to weather the storm of a few years of a federal administration that's unfriendly toward wind.
"I think both governments and private investors understand that offshore wind is a long-term opportunity. So, you don't build a wind port for the next four years, you're building a wind port for 50, 100 years," he said. "So, I think near-term political factors can kind of affect confidence in the near term, but the fundamentals of offshore wind are unchanged by that near term political volatility. And you're investing in these assets for 50-100 years, so you really have to take a longer view."
Floating offshore wind would be an entirely new technology, and source of energy, for the U.S. There are small floating wind sites in other parts of the world, including in Norway and Scotland.
The state of Maine has nascent plans for a port on Sears Island in the works which would support the construction of floating offshore wind turbines; the proposal has met resistance from locals and activists who want to preserve the island's untouched wilderness.
The Biden-Harris administration will hold an auction this October for bids on eight lease areas for offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Maine, two of which are on the Maine coast.
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