September 17, 2023 — President Joe Biden’s goal to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind along U.S. coastlines this decade to fight climate change may be unattainable due to soaring costs and supply chain delays, according to forecasters and industry insiders.
The 2030 target, unveiled shortly after Biden took office, is central to Biden’s broader plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050. It is also crucial to targets of Northeast states hoping wind will help them move away from fossil fuel-fired electricity.
“It doesn’t mean that there can’t still be excellent progress towards this technology that’s going to do great things for our nation,” said Kris Ohleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent organization that provides guidance and research to the industry.
“It’s just not going to be that size by 2030. It’s pretty clear at this point.”
In recent months soaring materials costs, high interest rates and supply chain delays have led project developers including Orsted (ORSTED.CO), Equinor (EQNR.OL), BP (BP.L), Avangrid (AGR.N) and Shell (SHEL.L) to cancel or seek to renegotiate power contracts for the first commercial-scale U.S. wind farms with operating start dates between 2025 and 2028.