Will Offshore Wind Job Boon Surpass Offshore Drilling Losses?

While offshore drilling remains a hotly-contested topic, the U.S. is moving full-spin ahead on offshore wind farms (and their associated benefits).

Danish power company Ørsted signed a memorandum of agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to gather data related to climate change.

“Having more data sharing and more sampling from the wind developers is going to help us, wherever there are wind development projects, to understand that bigger picture,” said Carl Gouldman, director of the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System program office.

This squares with Biden Administration plans to expand the country’s offshore wind capacity from 42 to 30,000 megawatts by 2030.

The White House claims this will “trigger more than $12 billion per year in capital investment in projects on both U.S. coasts, create tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs” (including 44,000 workers in offshore wind by 2030 and nearly 33,000 additional jobs in communities supported by offshore wind activity).

To bring this back around, the agreement with Ørsted is the first of “future data-sharing agreements that NOAA expects to enter into with other developers,” and the related employment benefits.

Meanwhile, offshore drilling has been banned within 125 miles off the Florida coastline in the Eastern Planning Area, and a portion of the Central Planning Area, until 2022 – a move which some claim could cost thousands of jobs.

Read more about these agreements (and legislation) here.