Governor Cuomo commits to 2400 megawatts of off shore wind

 

 

img_5284In today’s state of the state address at Farmingdale State University, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced some fantastic news for off shore wind power.

New York will commit to *up to* 2400 megawatts of off shore wind power by 2030, including 800 in the area off Long Beach and the Rockaway Peninsula – enough for 1.25 million homes, and LIPA will go forward with the 90 megawatt project off Montauk.

Press release here

We thank Governor Cuomo for this and our work towards the largest realistic rapid deployment of climate protecting and environment-saving off shore wind will continue.

We believe it’s a solid beginning and will continue to advocate it not be too little,  too late, on such a long time line that anything could derail it.
Activists have been pushing for a large-scale, megawatt-specific commitment, and they got that part. They had been pushing for development of 5,000 of the 35,000 potential megawatts off our shore by 2025, with further commitments made  to achieve the amount needed for the Governor’s plan for New York to be powered by 50% renewable energy by 2030.  

Seen in context of this, though a solid beginning, there’s just no way the math will work to reach this goal in those 13 long years with this smaller amount of offshore wind.
The math:

2400 MW of rated wind power capacity would equal 

960 MW (40% capacity) which would produce 

8,409,000 MW hours of electricity a year: New York State currently uses 

137,122,000 per year. That would make off shore wind, eventually, 

6% at the END of the race. (Info courtesy US Energy Information Administration )

Can enough solar come to the rescue of that? We would have to have a 1200% increase in solar electricity production. That’s doubling what we have built so far in just the next year and continuing at that pace until 2030. It could be a compounded 30% increase every year- hard to imagine with incentives slashed, financing gone, and the easiest, most profitable sites already done.

The governor did also announce plans to fund the long sought after study on making New York State run on 100% renewable energy.

Governor Cuomo directs the Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to undertake a comprehensive study to determine the most rapid, cost-effective, and responsible pathway to reach 100 percent renewable energy statewide.

Happy for the commitment and thanks to the Governor for putting us on the path. We will take it, and it doesn’t mean we’re satisfied. We know together we can and must do more!

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