Executive Summary
Offshore wind is quickly becoming a national industry in the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is advancing Wind Energy Areas in every major U.S. body of water – the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico. Broader market policy alignment between state and federal governments on offshore wind is driving the creation of a national offshore wind supply chain, now located in more than 30 states. Washington State-based companies are working on a Massachusetts project, substations are being constructed in Texas for New York, and a South Carolina facility will supply cables for projects up and down the East Coast. Ports in the Northeast are breaking ground on facilities that will soon be handling offshore wind turbine components and Gulf of Mexico shipyards are active with supply chains running deep into the interior. While the U.S. is still years away from having a mature domestic offshore wind supply chain, 2021 will be remembered as the transformational year that kickstarted U.S. offshore wind. The Biden administration’s whole-of-govern- ment approach to offshore wind bolstered cross-agency collaboration and drove BOEM’s tremendous regulatory output during 2021, fostering greater transparency, certainty, longevity, and predictability into the U.S. offshore wind development process. These administration efforts, combined with passage of a new bipartisan in- frastructure law and continued robust state support, generated tremendous ex- citement in the U.S. supply chain and spurred industry growth and investment. The Business Network’s Supply Chain Connect database of current and pro- spective suppliers grew 61 percent over the past year, a growth rate four times the year previous, and now includes companies in 44 states. Network-identi- fied contracts grew 106 percent with a majority going to U.S. companies, and more than $2.2 billion in new public and private investments were publicly announced, including nine primary component facilities making the blades, foundations, and cables that will build the U.S. offshore wind industry. These contracts and investments are further broken down by region, sector, and other attributes in the report. The U.S. must not let up its pace, however, because global competition is fierce and intensifying. The speed that the domestic U.S. offshore wind supply chain expands during the 2022-2025 timeframe will likely prove decisive as to whether the Biden administration’s goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind capacity in U.S. waters by 2030 is achieved and putting the U.S. on a path to 110 GW by 2050.
Broader market policy alignment between state and federal governments on offshore wind is driving the creation of a national offshore wind supply chain, now located in more than 30 states.
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BUSINESS NETWORK FOR OFFSHORE WIND 2022 U.S. OFFSHORE WIND MARKET REPORT & INSIGHTS | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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