The Offshore Wind Supporter
Kamala Harris
From the beginning it was clear that Kamala Harris would be a staunch supporter of offshore wind.
She was a climate hawk who had backed the controversial Green New Deal, the Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Fighting Act. All of them had proposed subsidies and tax incentives to companies willing to take on the risk of developing offshore wind.
But in late July, Harris had announced that she was no longer supporting a ban on fracking. It was a reversal from her 2019 position when she had been running for president.
The announcement put some environmental groups into a tizzy but it shouldn’t have done so. It was really just a wise adjustment to reality.
Fracking is a dirty business but it has provided a necessary bridge allowing the United States to move away from coal to green energy as it had in Salem. Their dirty coal plant had been replaced by a gas fired plant and was now the site was being used to build and install offshore wind turbines.
Fracking had also shifted the U.S. from being an energy importer to an energy exporter which gave us leverage in foreign affairs. It allowed the U.S. to step in when Russia stopped pumping gas to Europe during the war in Ukraine and provided be a counterweight to OPEC’s power.
Undoubtedly the fact that fracking creates thousands of jobs in swing states like Pennsylvania had something to do with Harris’ decision, but for the short term, the very short term, fracking continues to be necessary but dirty.
What was clear was that solar energy had quietly taken off after Biden signed the infrastructure bill. In 2024 three times as many solar panels were being installed as when Biden signed the bill in 2022.
During the same two years wind power start-ups were producing far less capacity than they had before the law was passed. This would make it more difficult for the U.S. to reach its global climate goals because the two systems, wind and solar, were designed to work in tandem with solar producing electricity by day and wind power by night.
The problem is that you can’t just build a wind turbine anywhere. All the windier spots, the low hanging fruit, had already been taken.
Plus, the cost of wind power had soared when the pandemic had disrupted supply chains. At the same time China had been able to double its ability to produce solar panels while only three companies are set up to build offshore wind turbines. The cost overruns had caused half of the offshore developers to cancel their projects in the Northeast.
On paper wind is crucial to fight global warming. In places like Texas that has both extensive solar and onshore wind turbines Tech companies and hydrogen producers need electricity produced around the clock.
If we can’t build large energy projects like offshore wind farms the way we build offshore oil rigs during the petroleum era it will make fighting global warming almost impossible.
Very good overview...younger people don't know about the oil embargo of the 1970's (and how very crappy that was) and the importance of the US to secure our present energy needs before we go after solar and wind.
Ray Belsito
Petersham, Ma