This research appears in the Oct. 20 issue of the journal Joule.
“Massive upscaling of wind turbine deployments offshore is critical to achieving global and national goals to decarbonize the electricity supply,” said Sara C. Pryor, professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, a department shared by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and the College of Engineering.
“The excellent wind resource and proximity to large markets along the East Coast means it is the focus of America’s first-phase, offshore-wind projects, where thousands of physically larger and higher capacity wind turbines will be deployed over large areas (about 1.7 million acres of water, combined) at an unprecedented scale,” Pryor said.
On Oct. 13, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the path forward for offshore wind leasing agreements to meet the White House-announced goal to deploy 30 gigawatts – enough to power 90 million homes – of East Coast offshore wind energy by 2030.
At the New York State level, there are now five offshore wind projects in active development, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The state has an offshore goal of 9,000 megawatts by 2035. The current offshore projects total about 4,300 megawatts, enough to power approximately 2 million homes.
