CESA Offshore Wind Accelerator Year in Review – 2024

As the year comes to a close, CESA would like to thank all of our partners involved in our Offshore Wind Accelerator. CESA’s offshore wind projects are truly collaborative endeavors, and we are grateful to the talented staff in state and national governments, our colleagues at community-based environmental justice organizations and nonprofit organizations, and our dedicated funders that help us do such rewarding work. 

This has been a pivotal year for offshore wind in the United States, and CESA is proud of the work that we have done to help advance offshore wind deployment at the state level. Below, we highlight our major accomplishments. 

Offshore Wind and Equity 

CESA’s Offshore Wind and Equity project began in 2021 and has evolved since then. In 2024, we built on the relationships we forged over the past three years and focused the project on building effective partnerships between state agencies and community-based and environmental justice organizations committed to creating a just and equitable offshore wind industry.  

In March, CESA began organizing an Offshore Wind and Equity National Workshop in collaboration with an impressive project team, made up of five state agencies, seven community-based organizations (CBOs), and Kevin Bryan, Principal at Equnival Partners. The team aimed to build on progress they made during an Offshore Wind and Equity Scoping Dialogue that CESA held in 2022. Through five months of meetings and extensive one-on-one and small-group work, the project team developed a comprehensive agenda around the theme of “Rethinking Community Engagement” between state agencies and historically marginalized communities. 

The virtual, three-day Offshore Wind and Equity National Workshop in August received participation from nine state governments and fourteen CBOs. It featured presentations from CBOs and state agencies, an interactive mapping exercise, and several large- and small-group discussions, where participants identified six pathways to improve community engagement in the offshore wind planning and development process.  

To build on the momentum from the workshop, CESA launched an Offshore Wind and Equity Working Group in October, made up of several state agency and CBO participants from the Workshop. They are refining the Workshop’s pathways into a set of recommendations for state governments to foster robust community engagement and participation in the offshore wind project planning and development. The Working Group will finalize its recommendations in Spring 2024. 

Offshore Wind Learning Exchange 

In 2024, CESA’s Offshore Wind Learning Exchange continued to bring together US state and European offshore wind experts and policymakers to share knowledge and experiences and forge productive cross-Atlantic relationships. The year kicked off with a presentation about the Kriegers Flak Combined Grid Solution, the first project to interconnect offshore wind farms hosted by two different nations, Germany and Denmark. An expert panel featuring Peter Markussen from Danish TSO Energinet, Henrich Quick from Germany TSO 50Hertz, and Ricardo Renedo-Williams of the European Commission explained the regulatory and engineering challenges that they overcame to develop the project and their plans for future high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) interconnection projects in Europe. In October, CESA organized an informal meeting of the LX network to hear updates from US state agencies on industry and policy developments during 2024.  

During the summer, CESA interviewed several states to understand what lessons and perspectives from Europe would be most helpful to their current stages of planning and development. States shared many answers, but the European offshore wind supply chain emerged as the dominant theme. With states’ specific questions in hand, CESA commissioned strategic consultant BVG Associates to help states better understand how the offshore wind supply chain developed in Europe. A private meeting between BVG and CESA member-states is scheduled for early January 2025. 

Offshore Wind Power Hub 

At the end of July, CESA and the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) launched the Offshore Wind Power Hub Interactive Map and State Policy Dashboard to the public, capping eight months of intensive work. The Interactive Map and State Policy Dashboard are the first tools to track and display every offshore wind project, lease area, and major state law in the nation, at no charge. The Offshore Wind Power Hub has seen an impressive 18,000 visits this year. 

Since its launch, CESA and NWF have updated the Interactive Map to add offshore wind ports and cable landings. CESA plans to overhaul several aspects of the site in 2025 to include more detailed offshore wind project, lease area, and state policy information. 

CESA also oversaw the development and release of two members-only features of the Power Hub: a Resource Library and Forum. The Resource Library is a compendium of over 120 published reports, studies, databases, websites, and other useful content for government policymakers and nonprofit offshore wind and clean energy advocates. The Forum is a safe and secure platform for nonprofit offshore wind and clean energy advocates to share information, build community, and organize.

Maryland Works for Wind 

In support of the Maryland Department of Labor’s Maryland Works for Wind (MWW) program, CESA organized and hosted three virtual roundtables for state energy agencies, workforce agencies, and MWW grantees to learn from one another about their work on workforce development for offshore wind. In February, the first roundtable discussed how states can create resilient workforce programs and respond to project delays and cancellations. The conversation revolved around creating flexible training programs that prepare trainees for a variety of jobs.  

In June, NYSERDA’s Jess Dealy shared how the agency built its OffshoreWindTraining.org website, which includes a comprehensive interactive offshore wind careers map and a map of training opportunities in New York and New Jersey. This past November, Paula Perez and Jeremy Steffek presented research from NREL’s upcoming workforce and supply chain assessments for the SMART-POWER region, which includes Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. After the presentation, participants discussed what NREL’s findings mean for building a robust domestic supply chain and how states can promote regional collaboration. 

Webinars 

In March, a CESA webinar entitled “Energy Storage and Offshore Wind: Unlocking a Critical Piece of the Clean Energy Puzzle,” covered a recent study from E3 on the reliability benefits of deploying long-term energy storage alongside offshore wind power in Massachusetts. The webinar featured presentations from E3, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, and the New York State Department of Public Service. The webinar was attended by 160 people, and the recording has been viewed by 388 people. Watch a recording of the webinar at the link above. 

Newsletters 

To complement its project work, CESA published six bimonthly Offshore Wind Accelerator Newsletters, summarizing the latest key offshore wind news, to a highly engaged audience of over 2,700 readers. While there are several newsletters available to offshore wind watchers, CESA breaks down the news into a brief format that readers can rely on to provide a quick roundup of the most important headlines and how they fit into the larger picture.  

Beyond the news, the Newsletter features long-form articles, videos, and podcasts that provide readers with a broader view of the industry, and “Building the Foundation,” an episodic series of short articles describing how offshore wind projects actually get built. Read every newsletter published this year on our Newsletters webpage. 

In conjunction with the newsletter, CESA Project Manager Sam Schacht conducts “Three Questions” interviews with key people in state governments and nonprofits working to build out an American offshore wind industry. This year, Acting Commissioner of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, Chris Kearns, explained why Rhode Island’s participated in the nation’s first ever “Tri-State Procurement,” along with Massachusetts and Connecticut. Stephanie Watson, Floating Offshore Wind Manager at the Maine Governor’s Energy Office, shared how Maine is navigating some of the state’s unique environmental challenges to build up to 3 GW of offshore wind. Barr Foundation’s Senior Program Officer for Clean Energy, Kathryn Wright, and Hart Research’s Partner Jay Campbell joined Sam to describe the design and key takeaways from an ambitious survey to understand attitudes of southern New England residents towards offshore wind development. The final interview of the year featured Kristin Urbach, Executive Director of the Connecticut Offshore Wind Collaborative, recounting the story of the nonprofit and its role in growing Connecticut’s offshore wind industry and supply chain.