DOE releases first Offshore Wind Energy Strategy summarizing efforts to deploy 30 GW by 2030

Summing up its efforts to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 and as much as 110 GW or more by 2050, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released its first Offshore Wind Energy Strategy this week.

The strategy is based on four pillars: NOW, FORWARD, CONNECT, and TRANSFORM. The NOW focus addresses a push to lower costs from $74 per MW hour to $51 per MW hour by 2030, the development of a domestic supply chain, and the general deployment of fixed-bottom offshore wind production. FORWARD is essentially the Floating Offshore Wind Shot initiative launched earlier this year: an effort to reduce costs by more than 70 percent, down to $45 per MW hour, and promote U.S. leadership in the offshore wind industry.

For reference, that industry is growing worldwide, and domestically, 40 GW of offshore wind is currently in various stages of development.

The remaining pillars include CONNECT, which aims to enable reliable and resilient transmission solutions for large-scale offshore wind development, and TRANSFORM, signaling the department’s goal to expand offshore wind co-generation technologies to aid electrification and decarbonization simultaneously.

“The transformative potential of offshore wind energy is critical to achieving President Biden’s bold clean energy goals,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said. “As our Offshore Wind Energy Strategy shows, we’re leveraging all resources across our department to harness this clean and reliable American energy source, which will create tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs and revitalize coastal communities.”

The department estimated that deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 could provide as much as $12 billion annually in direct private investment while offering enough energy to power 10 million homes.