Page 31: of Marine News Magazine (November 2022)

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resource being 2,058 GW of power.

U.S. maritime interests jumped in with both feet, and the Zoom meet- ings held between European offshore wind operators and domestic builders and operators burned up the Internet.

We at Alternative Marine Technolo- gies (Amtech) Zoomed with many of them amid a rush to contract new construction. Many of vessel designs had never been built in U.S yards, and some companies did not understand

U.S shipbuilding and operation.

The speed of the response is not sur- prising. Europe boasts more than 6,000 operating wind turbines, and the Unit- ed States only seven. With our involve- ment, Amtech watched as delivery for offshore support vessels were scheduled to arrive long before major machinery could be delivered to the shipyard or any wind farm towers would actually be erected—a result of supply chain and labor issues experienced during the pandemic period. These challenges, of course, follow previous wind farm de- lays, politics, cost overruns and issues experienced with Cape Wind, Deep- water Wind and other failed attempts to enter the emerging industry in the

United States.

But the industry took a step for- ward in 2021 when the Biden Ad- ministration announced a target of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 (for reference, the U.S. currently has just 0.042 GW of installed offshore wind power). With that announcement came the canceling of the Keystone pipeline and a moratorium on drill- ing and oil leases in the U.S Gulf. The reports and the politics seemed to be working toward a ? nal nail in the cof- ? n for the U.S. Gulf oil patch, where, www.marinelink.com MN 31|