New York State is having a breakthrough in offshore wind power
New York state has launched the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the nation, propelling the United States into a new era of clean energy production.
State officials announced Wednesday morning the first of 12 wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean began generating electricity now flowing to homes in Staten Island, New York, according to The New York Times. The South Fork Wind farm is still under construction, but officials say it will be able to power 70,000 homes once it is complete.
It is the country’s first large-scale offshore wind farm to go online, The New York Times reported.
The record-setting wind farm furthers President Joe Biden’s goal to produce 30 gigawatts of offshore wind electricity — enough to power more than 10 million homes — by 2030.
But the US is still far from meeting Mr Biden’s ambitious clean energy goal. The developer of two major wind farms off the coast of New Jersey cancelled construction last month, citing problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain enough tax credits.
The New Jersey wind farms were set to produce more than 2.2 gigawatts of power, The Independent previously reported.
Those cancellations came after three other projects off of Massachusetts and Connecticut were also shut down earlier this year. They would have produced another 3.2 gigawatts of energy.