Page 8: of Marine News Magazine (October 2023)

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By the

Numbers

Big Money Needed to Develop

US Offshore Wind Ports

Much has been written about po- have gone into development or be- of Mexico to meet its 2030 goal and tential bottlenecks in store for various gan commercial operations in the lay the foundations for 2050. This parts of the U.S. offshore wind indus- U.S. over the last ? ve years—the means the U.S. is currently facing an try, from vessels to monopiles. A new majority of which are in the North- offshore port infrastructure gap of 64 report published by the Business Net- east and Mid-Atlantic, according to to 84 projects.

work for Offshore Wind (BNOW) BNOW’s report, “Building a Nation- The industry needs a network of outlines the need for signi? cant in- al Network of Offshore Wind Ports: port facilities to ef? ciently manufac- vestment in and development of port A $36B Plan for Domestic Clean En- ture, store, stage, install and maintain infrastructure to support the industry ergy Infrastructure”. offshore wind turbines. Port types in its goal of 30 gigawatts (GW) of But that’s only the tip of the ice- include marshaling ports, staging & offshore wind power by 2030 and 110 berg. The report’s authors estimate integration ports, ? exible laydown

GW by 2050. that the U.S. needs a total of 99 to ports, manufacturing ports, opera-

The good news is that more than 119 port development sites across the tions & maintenance ports.

35 new offshore wind port projects East Coast, West Coast and the Gulf BNOW estimates that the total cost to address the nation’s offshore wind port infrastructure gap, assuming 2023 construction prices and no ? - nancing costs, is between $22.5 billion and $27.2 billion. This construction funding gap is approximately 3.4% to 6.2% of the total capital needed for project deployment through 2050.

After estimating the timing of projects over the next decade, and ac- counting for construction in? ation, the upper bound of capital required to address the offshore wind port in- frastructure gap escalates from $27.2 billion ($ 2023) to $36 billion ($ Year of Expenditure (YoE)). According to

BNOW’s report, the ? nancial costs associated with developing these proj- ects is estimated to be an additional $7.2 billion ($ YoE) over 10 years.

Source: Business Network for Offshore Wind, “Building a National Network of Offshore Wind Ports:

A $36B Plan for Domestic Clean Energy Infrastructure” 8 | MN October 2023