Senate Subcommittee approves funding for Maine Offshore Wind Energy Work

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee’s initial approval of a $10 million appropriation to support University of Maine deepwater offshore wind energy research and development.

Sen. Susan Collins has supported this work since the beginning, already having helped secure $25 million in federal funding as UMaine works toward developing and testing this technology. Plans call for the first 1/3 scale floating wind turbine to be deployed off Maine for testing in 2012.  The additional funding will be used to build, deploy and test a full-scale prototype of a 5 MW floating wind turbine, using Maine companies and Maine labor.

The State of Maine Ocean Energy Task Force has set a goal of developing 5000 MW of deepwater offshore wind farms by 2030, equivalent to the energy production of three nuclear power plants. This development represents less than 3 % of the 150,000 MW of offshore wind capacity that exists within 50 nautical miles of Maine’s coast. These farms would be placed approximately 20 miles–50 miles offshore where they would not be visible from land, and where Maine has some of the best and most consistent winds in the country. Such an effort could attract as much as $20 billion of private capital to Maine. The offshore wind industry builds on Maine’s maritime tradition, and could create thousands of jobs across the manufacturing, engineering, permitting, environmental, boatbuilding, construction, maintenance and composite materials sectors.