As East Coast states jockey to attract offshore wind developers and the jobs the new industry promises, proponents of the Gulf of Mexico believe their region is ready to join the green push
The Gulf of Mexico has spent eight decades as one of the nation’s prime petroleum hubs, home to thousands of rigs, platforms and other structures that drill, store and ship fossil fuels. Now the Biden administration is reviewing 30 million acres of Gulf waters near Texas and Louisiana for potential wind turbines — a development that could dovetail with proposals to generate other clean energy sources, such as hydrogen.
The Gulf Coast also has another advantage, BOEM Director Amanda Lefton said: companies and workers with decades of experience in producing energy offshore. Take the nation’s first U.S. commercial offshore wind farm, the Block Island project off Rhode Island, which began commercial operation in 2016: Gulf Island Fabrication, a shipyard in Houma, La., built that project’s turbine foundations. New Orleans’ LM Wind Power did its blade testing and design, and the Gulf region’s Keystone Engineering designed its four-pile jacket substructures.
“We want to support the workers who have for 100 years powered this nation, and we want them to power this nation for the next 100 years while we power them with clean energy.”“That really provides an advantage for the Gulf of Mexico when you think about shaving the learning curve and the cost curve for deploying offshore wind,” Framme said.
The Gulf Coast’s long experience with oil and gas can also help make its offshore wind projects more cost effective. “One of the things that makes the Gulf area attractive is the fact that you’ve got a workforce that is accustomed to working on rigs in the ocean.”, NREL examined the potential of a 600-megawatt offshore wind project in Texas’ Port Arthur with a commercial operation date of 2030.
James Cotter, general manager of offshore wind in the Americas at Shell, said the offshore wind industry in the Gulf would start from day one with an eye toward integrating other technologies. Hecht, from Greater New Orleans, said the states hope to use the infrastructure money to “begin the case of green hydrogen,” while lowering the cost per kilogram. “We have this massive customer base that can pay for green hydrogen at scale, which will help bring down the per unit cost,” he said.
Already, other states are contending with the high price tags associated with offshore wind development. The Virginia attorney general’s office recentlyoff its coast would have capital costs about two to three times the cost of solar resources and pose “significant risks” to customers. Texas, however, is not pursuing offshore wind to the same extent, which is a hurdle for the industry, said Luke Metzger, the executive director of the environmental advocacy groupfound that offshore wind could provide Texas with 166 percent of its electricity needs.
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