U.S. could be the ‘Persian Gulf of Wind Energy’

Not just the Midwest … but why the Mid-Atlantic Can Be the ‘Persian Gulf of Offshore Wind Energy’ 
The region could provide nearly a third of U.S. energy demand with wind turbines…a vision that goes far beyond rhetoric to encapsulate a future of limitless, clean, healthy, secure and 100-percent American energy. It’s the “Persian Gulf of offshore wind energy” and it describes a little known area of the eastern seaboard otherwise known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight, which runs from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

In the annals of energy discoveries, the discovery of the Bight’s wind energy potential could rank right up there with the discovery of oil beneath the sands of the Arabian Peninsula. A 2007 joint Stanford University-University of Delaware study found that fully developed with over 166,000 wind turbines, the Bight’s waters could produce as much as 330,000 megawatts of power, or effectively one third of U.S. energy demand. Even more exciting, the researchers concluded that full-scale development of the resource was well within the realm of technological possibility…The project not only has the benefit of eliminating the need to build a separate shore link for every single wind farm, but will help overcome another concern associated with wind power in general — intermittency. It’s true that wind doesn’t blow all the time in any given location, but one advantage of the Mid-Atlantic Bight is that it’s so big there’s always a steady breeze blowing somewhere along its 600-mile length. Connected by the Google transmission backbone, farms up and down the Bight could thus provide clean, reliable power, 24/7 for consumers in the Northeast.

It so happens that building in federal waters also happens to provide environmental benefits. Among the commonly expressed concerns about wind energy is the impact on bird and other local wildlife populations. While these concerns are overblown in regards to land-based turbines, they’re even more negligible when it comes to turbines built 10 to 12 miles out to sea. According to evidence from over 40 existing offshore wind parks in Europe and a rigorous federal environmental-impact assessment of the Cape Wind project, sea-based turbines pose no significant impact to birds or marine life. The Cape Wind study was so convincing that the Massachusetts Audubon Society fully endorsed the project in 2010.

A big job that means big-time jobs
The true promise of the Bight lies not only in the fact that it’s a clean energy resource that can meet the scale of our energy needs, but that it’s one which can match the expectations about a “green jobs” revolution.… numbers from the Maryland Energy Administration show that a 500-megawatt wind farm could result in the creation of up to 2,000 short-term manufacturing jobs, and 400 permanent jobs. That works out to about five jobs per megawatt, or well over 1.5 million jobs through the Bight’s full-scale 330,000 megawatt development.

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