Friday, March 14, 2014
Off-Shore Wind - New York has substantial offshore wind resources, and polls show 8 of 10 Long Islanders support offshore wind development. The Governor announced the Clean Energy Standard, an effort to achieve 50% of NY’s electric generation needs to come from renewable energy by 2030. The US Department of Energy projects that there will be 43k jobs in this industry by 2030.
The Downstate region (LI and NYC), make up roughly 60% of the energy load in New York State, disproportionate to the roughly 10-12% of electrical generation that occurs downstate. It is imperative that:
- We support a commitment and investment in Offshore Wind
- There needs to be a “downstate” tier included in the Clean Energy Standard to ensure we are able to meet the growing long-term energy demand within our region in a reliable way.
- The amount of dollars being shipped to fund upstate electrical generation projects, to ultimately meet demand downstate energy demand is unacceptable. We need the inclusion of LIPA in the Clean Energy Standard to ensure these dollars remain in our communities, as Long Island continues to be an economic engine for the rest of New York State.
- There needs to be a commitment in the Clean Energy Standard that LIPA will buy Offshore Wind Energy through power purchase agreements.
Now is the time to aggressively move forward with siting offshore wind for Long Island so we can begin to develop a new industry on Long Island. We have a unique opportunity to build out the first utility-scale Offshore Wind Farm in the United States of America. Due to our geography, Long Island and NYS are perfectly positioned to capture an exponentially large proportion of the expected 43k jobs to be created in this industry by 2030, many of which will be high paying long term careers.
The consequences of our nation’s shortsighted energy choices are never more visible than a catastrophic environmental disaster. Superstorm Sandy is just one example of the extreme weather events, which are predicted to increase in frequency as a result of climate change. With miles and miles of coast, Long Island has the offshore wind potential to provide 5,000m MWof clean, emission-free power to residents. Off-shore wind can be advanced in place of dirty peaker plants and unsightly transmission lines.
One proposal for offshore wind, known as Deepwater, is for a wind farm 30 miles off the coast of Montauk which would produce approximately 110 MW of renewable energy. This would provide clean reliable energy for the east end of Long Island. The Shoreham port is ready-made and perfectly positioned for production, manufacturing and fabrication of the materials to grow this industry in a way that will limit the impact on our downtowns
Issue: