History

Origins of USOWC

The idea of creating an interdisciplinary public/private partnership to facilitate the development and growth of a sustainable offshore wind industry in the United States was conceived in 2004 following the first proposal to build an offshore wind energy project in this country.  After exploring Europe’s decade-plus experience with wind energy in the marine environment, learning about the potential of our domestic offshore wind resource and gaining firsthand experience with the initial permitting deliberations around Cape Wind, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) joined with GE Wind Energy and the US Department of Energy (DOE) to consider the question, “What would it take to build an offshore wind energy industry here, and do it right?”

These three partners formed the initial, informal Offshore Wind Collaborative, convening a broad group of stakeholders in Washington, DC to consider a myriad of opportunities and challenges:  global warming and energy security, the vast offshore wind resources of the United States, the complexities of working in the marine ecosystem, and the prospects for new technologies that would expand access to the wind resource.  The result was A Framework for Offshore Wind Energy Development in the United States (September 2005). The Framework is a comprehensive agenda for the development of a sustainable offshore wind industry that anticipates environmental and socioeconomic concerns and calls for harnessing the collective resources of academia, the public sector, business, and the NGO community to address key issues and to take advantage of every opportunity to mitigate by design.

To demonstrate the value of an offshore wind collaborative, DOE, GE, and MTC jointly funded six pilot projects.  The projects were completed in 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.  They covered topics relating to the regulatory framework for offshore wind, technical considerations, and the economic and environmental performance of offshore wind.

MTC took the next step by funding a draft Organizational Business Plan to consider, with input from potential partners, how to structure a new national collaborative to build a sustainable offshore wind industry in the US.
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