Offshore wind power center earns praise
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, praised the University of Maine's AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center yesterday after touring facility where deep-water offshore windmills are being designed.
Chu, invited to Maine by Sen. Susan Collins, told the Bangor Daily News he was impressed with Maine's leadership to grow a sustainable economy while developing renewable energy technology. The center's director, Habib Dagher, says offshore wind power will leverage traditional Maine industries such as forestry, shipbuilding, manufacturing and seafaring and create up to 15,000 new jobs by 2030, when a proposed network of commercial floating wind farms will be installed up to 50 miles off shore. Dagher has also said the project could attract as much as $20 billion of investments over the next 20 years.
The project, which involves floating platforms supporting 300-foot towers with 200-foot blades in waters up to 3,000 feet deep, has been funded by two U.S. Department of Energy grants totaling $12.1 million. The plan calls for the windmills' components to be manufactured in Maine by boatbuilding firms familiar with composite materials. Last week, the BDN reported that Maine joined nine other states and the U.S. Department of the Interior to establish the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium to streamline the review and site process for projects in U.S. waters that must be approved by the federal Minerals Management Service. The consortium hopes to reduce the time it takes to receive federal permits from seven years to three.
Go to the article in the Bangor Daily News >>
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