November 23, 2020 — Few industries stand to benefit more from the Biden administration’s arrival than clean energy, and the nascent offshore wind sector in New England could get a long-awaited boost as a result.
So far, construction has yet to start on any major offshore wind farm in the United States, as projects before the Trump administration were mired in permitting delays. Now, with a sympathetic ally in the White House, the floodgates could be poised to open.
President-elect Joe Biden has set aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gases, by, for example, rejoining the Paris climate accord, which Trump abandoned, and pushing the electric-power sector to be carbon-free by 2035. Those goals will be tough to pull off without offshore wind.
“You’re poised for a big explosion of offshore wind growth,” said Theodore Paradise, a senior vice president at the power line developer Anbaric, in Wakefield.
Industry executives hope a Biden-controlled Department of the Interior will ease the permitting bottleneck. Equally important: restarting auctions for offshore zones that have apparently been on hold under the current Interior secretary, David Bernhardt.