The Cuomo Administration recently released the New York State Offshore Wind Blueprint, a plan to advance the development of offshore wind along New York’s coastline.
The blueprint defines an Offshore Study area of the ocean covering over 16,000 square miles, from the south shore of Long Island and New York City out to the continental shelf break. Within this area are potential sites for future offshore wind installations.
According to the blueprint document, New York has 39 GW of wind energy potential off of its coast. To put this in perspective, this is twenty times the output of the embattled Indian Point Nuclear Power plant which has been supplying a quarter of the electricity for the New York Metropolitan area and 10% of the electricity for the entire state.
The blueprint creates the framework for an offshore wind master plan that will be developed and completed by the end of next year. The plan will be created by a group of stakeholders headed up by NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. NYSERDA plans to participate in the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction for an 81,000-acre Wind Energy Area located 12 miles off the Long Island coast. This will be the first time a state entity has participated in one of these BOEM auctions.
The first offshore wind installation in the U.S. has just been completed off the coast of Rhode Island. From all appearances, we are finally going to start making use of one of our country’s richest energy resources and New York is moving aggressively in that direction.
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New York Unveils Offshore Wind Blueprint
Photo, posted May 13, 2011, courtesy of Department of Energy and Climate Change via Flickr.
‘Blueprint for Offshore Wind in NY’ from Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.