New York's $6 Billion Plan For Offshore Wind Shows That Oil Drilling Really Is On the Way Out (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a plan earlier this month to develop $6 billion of offshore wind projects off the southern coast of Long Island by 2028 and predicted that the industry would bring 5,000 jobs to the state. The plan calls for developing 2.4 gigawatts -- enough to power 1.2 million homes -- by 2030. It's all part of New York's Clean Energy Standard, which requires 50% of the state's electricity come from renewable sources like solar and wind. The move comes as President Donald Trump earlier this month announced a five-year plan to open up areas of the East Coast to offshore drilling.

"While the federal government continues to turn its back on protecting natural resources and plots to open up our coastline to drilling, New York is doubling down on our commitment to renewable energy and the industries of tomorrow," Cuomo said in a statement. Cuomo has asked Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for an exemption from the drilling plan, saying in an open letter that the plan "undermines New York's efforts to combat climate change by shifting from greenhouse gas emitting fossil energy sources to renewable sources, such as offshore wind." The report identifies a 1 million acre site approximately 20 miles south of Long Island that would best support the wind turbines, and "ensure that, for the vast majority of the time, turbines would have no discernible or visible impact from the casual viewer on the shore." The report also notes that New Jersey announced a similar plan last Wednesday to develop 3.5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity off its coast.

Comments

Re:Eletrical grid Energy doesn't come from oil

[rjnagle]

I don't know about the fuel mix in the state of New York (and maybe the headline is a mistake), but one explanation is that there are 2 ways to use the offshore area: 1) for producing wind power and 2) to drill for oil for cars. Cuomo's decision may pre-empt using the land for oil exploration and drilling. That's my two cents anyway.

Marc Jacobson has done a lot of research into the viability of renewables. (Indeed, he presented this very idea to NY a few years ago. https://news.stanford.edu/news... ) He found that using solar and wind are complementary. Wind tends to be highest at night; solar by day.

Re:Let's move into the modern era...

[LynnwoodRooster]

The politics of building offshore wind isn't much better. There will ALWAYS be people fighting any new development, and slowing (or, in the case of Cape Wind, killing) deployment of new power sources. So you might as well go "for the best" because going to a lower-grade solution won't relax the difficulties in the first place.

Re:Let's move into the modern era...

[drinkypoo]

There is only one real solution: Nuclear.

[citation needed]

Not your grandfather's nuclear, TODAY'S nuclear.

I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear. But what I do see actually being installed today is wind and solar. We should have been ramping up solar in the 1970s, since even the PV panels of those days would repay their energy investment in less than seven years, and most of those panels would still be functioning today. But people like you fought that tooth and nail, and now here we are today, with people like you clamoring for something which doesn't exist: safe nuclear power. There is no such thing, which is why the private sector can not and will not ever insure one. Decommissioning costs are always multiples of estimates and we still have no viable plan for dealing with nuclear waste. Even reprocessed fuel leaves waste behind, and the waste from that is spectacularly nasty. The solution for nuclear waste isn't to double down and produce worse nuclear waste. It's to stop producing it at all, because it's wholly unnecessary.

Re:Oil will only go out of style when...

[angel'o'sphere]

Most numbers you have are wrong.
Gasoline ICE, below 20% ... only rare cases are above.
Coal and gas plants have the same efficiency, around 42%-45%, exception are combined cycle gas plants which reach 60%.
Battery charging is about 95% - 99% ... no idea why on /. people always claim it is lower.
Electric engines are 99.999 (add as much 9 as you want) % efficient. Sine nearly 100 years ...