June 20, 2024 — In the early 2000s, a long-time Louisiana engineer and entrepreneur thought it would be natural for the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico to expand into offshore wind. The industry could use the same workforce, the same shipyards and possibly even the same platforms to generate renewable power.
With designs, data and offshore leases from Texas, Herman Schellstede and his team planned to build a 62-turbine wind farm off Galveston’s coast— one of the first such proposals in the United States and the first in the Gulf of Mexico.
The team approached banks and even Koch Industries seeking financing for the $300 million wind farm, he said. But financing nascent offshore wind was apparently too risky a proposition in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. The wind farm was eventually scuttled.
“We were still too early,” said Schellstede, the Louisiana oil and gas entrepreneur who is still designing offshore wind turbines for projects in the gulf.
Now, 33 years after the first offshore wind farm was built in waters off Denmark, it’s still unclear if the time is right — or will ever be right — for the United States. In those years, only four wind farms generating 242 megawatts of power have been built off the U.S. coast; the largest just went into service in 2024.
Last year, inflation, supply chain problems and other macroeconomic issues led to the cancellation or renegotiation of about half of all proposed offshore wind projects. And while the Biden Administration is moving as quickly as possible to approve new lease sales and projects — expanding the amount of power generated by 10-fold — former President Donald Trump has promised to end offshore wind if elected.
The industry and advocates, however, do not seem daunted. Studies show offshore wind could meet 5% of the nation’s energy needs by 2035, and up to 25% by 2050.
“We’re all in this room today, not because we just see offshore wind as a massive opportunity — which it is to build you clean energy — but also we see the necessity of offshore wind,” said Amanda Lefton, vice president of offshore development for the renewable energy company RWE.
Lefton, speaking at an April conference of the offshore wind industry in New Orleans, said the technology is needed to meet national and state decarbonization goals. RWE is developing projects off the East Coast and California and working to create a supply chain for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico with…