Gov. Roy Cooper has joined 10 other East Coast governors and the Biden administration in the new Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership.
An effort to accelerate offshore wind progress, the partnership, in addition to Cooper, includes the White House national climate adviser, the secretaries of the Interior, Energy, Commerce and Transportation, and governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the administration announced June 23.
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“I think we’re at a place where we’re reaching an exciting point where it seems like there’s been a coalescence of notion that, you know, alternative energy makes sense, and wind is a gigantic piece of it,” Biden said last week before a meeting on this partnership.
The partnership is intended to be a forum for new initiatives and to coordinate ongoing efforts to address ocean co-use, transmission needs and other offshore wind priorities that could benefit from more federal, state, and regional coordination. The partnership will look to expand to the West Coast and the Gulf of Mexico as offshore wind energy projects develop in those areas.
Biden set a goal in March 2021 to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, which officials say is enough to power 10 million homes with clean energy, support 77,000 jobs, and spur $12 billion per year in private investment in offshore wind projects.
States in the partnership have committed to develop a domestic offshore wind manufacturing and logistics network, a sustainable workforce, and to support local and domestic businesses, when possible, for products and services.
Commitments on the federal level include timely and effective permitting and environmental reviews and use of the lease auction process to incentivize investing in the country’s offshore wind supply chain.
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