“It’s doable, but it won’t be easy,” said Larry
Gasteiger, executive director of WIRES, the
transmission industry trade group.
It takes about a decade to get transmission lines
planned, sited and built, he said, so 2035 “may
sound like it’s a ways off, but it’s really not when
you think about all of the infrastructure that’s
going to need to be built.”
It could cost $30 billion to $90 billion over
the next decade to build the transmission
infrastructure necessary to connect all the new
generation resources and maintain reliability,
according to WIRES.
Biden’s presidency — along with the rise of
Democrats in the Senate — is widely viewed
as a potential boon to a renewables industry
that’s already growing, despite the Trump
administration’s focus on fossil fuels and the
pandemic’s challenges to new utility-scale
operations. Last year was a record year for wind
and solar power installations.
Some state-level politicians, such as Democratic
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, started making moves in
favor of offshore wind around the time of Biden’s
victory. Mills announced in November that the
state is planning to help develop the first floating
offshore wind research farm in U.S. history.
And the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management announced on Feb. 3 that it’s
resuming an environmental review of a proposed
offshore wind project off Martha’s Vineyard in
Massachusetts. BOEM Director Amanda Lefton
said offshore wind “has the potential to help our
nation combat climate change, improve resilience
through reliable power and spur economic
development to create good-paying jobs.”