The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has hailed progress by American agencies in working with their Scandinavian counterparts to expedite the development of offshore wind in this country.
The leaders of the United States, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden released a joint statement promising leadership in the fight against climate change which included cooperation to finance and deploy clean energy.
A bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the government of Denmark to work together to develop more offshore wind power was also released .
“America is looking in the right places to share best practices about financing, locating, and operating successful offshore wind farms,” said Nancy Sopko, speaking for AWEA’s offshore wind program.
“Denmark has blazed the way to adoption of wind energy with over 40 percent of its electricity already coming from wind, and about a quarter of that from offshore turbines. There’s much to learn from their decades of experience and we’re excited about the prospects for this new agreement.”
Offshore wind is an important component of the U.S. Department of Energy’s recently updated Wind Vision, under which DOE says wind power can quadruple by 2030 to supply 20 percent of U.S. electricity.
The first five offshore wind turbines are now under construction off Rhode Island by Deepwater Wind, and are expected to go online this fall.
BOEM has issued 11 commercial wind leases along the Atlantic coast, which when fully developed, would generate enough energy to power over 4 million homes.