New Bedford, Massachusetts, was once a wealthy centre of the energy industry, sending out ships to hunt sperm whales whose oil illuminated the lamps of the 19th century. The small city is now among the northeastern US state’s poorest and seeking an energy renaissance — as a place to piece together parts for huge wind power complexes planned in ocean waters.
The White House is soon expected to approve Vineyard Wind, the first commercial-scale offshore wind power project in the US. Assembling its 64 towering turbines would give New Bedford an economic boost. The project will also be an early test of President Joe Biden’s aim to create “good-paying, union jobs” while driving US carbon emissions down by half in this decade, as pledged at his international climate summit this week.
Delivering well-paid jobs is a political prerequisite to Biden’s goal of a carbon-free power sector by 2035. His agenda threatens fossil fuel workers who are generally paid more, and are more widely unionized, than workers in solar or wind power, according to data from the US Energy and Employment Report. Lasting energy policy changes are likely to need support in Congress, including from lawmakers such as Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from coal rich West Virginia.
The offshore wind sector will be an entirely new industry in the US, with rows of white turbines sending power to markets on the coasts. The Biden administration last month laid out a vision for 30 gigawatts of offshore wind to be installed by 2030, creating 77,000 jobs — about the same number of jobs that are connected to Europe’s offshore wind sector, where 25GW of capacity is already installed, according to the trade association WindEurope.
“There is a huge opportunity in offshore wind,” said Philip Jordan, a vice-president at BW Research who studies energy employment.”It is a big, big potential job creator.” Most of the jobs are in the building, rather than operating, wind facilities. A University of Massachusetts Dartmouth analysis of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project estimated that 83 percent of