(Newswire.net — May 31, 2020) — Sustainability and energy efficiency are on everyone’s mind these days, yet prominent politicians and major energy companies in the United States are still openly hostile to the notion of embracing the wind as a means of generating energy. Whether it’s White House proclamations spreading misinformation about wind energy or energy industry norms that thwart the construction of new turbines, the United States appears to be rejecting wind energy in a major way.
That won’t always be true, however – as a matter of fact, there are plenty of reasons to look past the current bluster and realize that the American wind energy market will keep growing. Here’s why.
The US Could Have A $70 Billion Market
When it comes to offshore wind energy farms, most Americans know relatively little about the technology at play. That doesn’t mean that American industrialists and innovators aren’t paying keen attention to the potential of wind energy, however. Offshore wind farms have been cropping up in greater numbers than ever before in recent years, for instance, and a recent report illustrates that the United States could soon have a $70 billion offshore wind energy marketplace by as soon as 2030.
As the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment recently made clear in a well-received white paper, the United States is facing a nearly $70 billion CAPEX revenue opportunity by developing offshore wind farms and a related supply chain by 2030. Some states and industries will benefit more than others, but across the nation there’s a clear and growing opportunity to take advantage of wind to generate huge sums of direly-needed electricity.
Nevertheless, American efforts to embrace wind energy are at times thwarted by major politicians who spread misinformation on the subject. President Donald Trump was widely castigated by the science community for his false comments alleging that wind turbines give human beings cancer, for instance, in what was widely recognized as an appeal to the oil, gas, and coal sectors of the economy which generally support him. The comment nevertheless proliferated so widely that the American Cancer Society felt compelled to issue a correction, publicized via Bloomberg.
Despite these comments and similar cultural currents running against notions of sustainability, the wind market is still churning forward. This is largely because many consumers support sustainable energy enterprises and many industrialists and energy innovators understand the many benefits behind harnessing wind energy. According to the Department of Energy, for instance, the wind power sector employed a minimum of 100,000 Americans in 2016.
It’s thus natural for companies to invest in more training over the next few years for mobile tire repair, especially since larger swathes of the public are becoming concerned about sustainability and jobs-creation via the sponsoring of wind farms. Public officials and pro-fossil fuel actors will nevertheless continue to disseminate false or misleading information about the efficacy and health of wind farming.
The people demand it
There are many reasons that American wind power will keep growing in the foreseeable future, and many of them have to do with the fact that the people are simply demanding more renewable energy solutions. Yes, investors and industrialists are beginning to wake up and smell the roses as far as sustainability is concerned, but this is mostly happening because the consumers these groups need to appeal to are themselves desperate for cleaner, greener energy.
A desperate desire for the United States to drop fossil fuels and embrace wind-power and other sustainable methods of energy production apparently reaches across party lines. According to one analysis recently put forth by Business Insider, for example, both self-identified members of the Democratic and Republican parties favor embracing wind while dropping fossil fuel alternatives. This is incredibly important to consider, as partisanship and political disputes over energy sources have previously thwarted efforts to expand wind-generated power in the United States.
Partisanship and polarization are serious problems besetting the United States, but on this specific issue the American people are speaking loudly and clearly with one unified voice; they want wind energy, and they’re willing to pay for it in order to make it happen. Luckily, the cost-effectiveness of wind turbines and the fact that they’re only likely to become cheaper and cheaper as time goes on means that the American people won’t even have to pay much to get what they want in this instance.
While there is a broad consensus for wind power in the United States, it is indeed stronger in certain areas than in others. Those states likely to benefit from increased job production stemming from wind power generation, for starters, are the hotspots of political support for its continued expansion.
Coastal states love wind power
Coastal states in particular stand to benefit from increased offshore wind farming – installations are currently being planned from Maryland to Maine. In the forthcoming years, tens of thousands of jobs are expected to be created from these wind farms, per the DOE’s previously-linked data. Jobs created in this fashion will be diverse; we’ll need qualified, well-educated experts to handle the complex technology and plenty of hardworking blue-collar employees to manage daily responsibilities associated with wind power generation, too.
It’s thus easy to see why most politicians are beginning to embrace wind power initiatives. By championing wind-generated power, politicians are capable of boasting about blue collar jobs, as the Democratic Governor of New Jersey has been doing these past few years. With the people, politicians, investors, and industrialists all on the same page, it’s safe to say that wind power will keep finding all the political support it needs to keep expanding for years to come. This isn’t to say there won’t be continued hurdles to its success – politicians spreading nonsense about wind turbines will continue to thwart their advancement, for instance, and other green energy methods like solar power will also be popular.
We can nevertheless assess with high confidence that wind power is going to be a major part of the future of the United States. When it comes to ensuring everybody has access to the energy they need, wind turbines and wind-generated power will be eagerly welcomed by Americans everywhere.