According to a new Center for American Progress analysis, more than 12,000 direct jobs and 5,000 indirect jobs in the offshore wind industry are associated with projects that have been or are in danger of being paused due to the Trump administration’s executive orders attacking wind power. Included in this fact sheet is project-specific information to demonstrate some of the on-the-ground impacts that communities may see.
In the associated report and this fact sheet, a direct job is defined as one related to the installation or operation of wind energy technology, and an indirect job is defined as one related to supply chain requirements.
On federal lands, four wind power projects are currently in the permitting pipeline and are now in limbo. According to CAP analysis, these projects are associated with more than 1,900 direct and indirect jobs.
Thousands of jobs in the wind energy sector are at risk because the Trump administration is temporarily blocking wind energy permitting. The longer the temporary ban on wind energy permits lasts, the longer communities could have to wait for the benefits from these projects.
Read more
Methodology
When necessary, values in both tables were rounded down.
Offshore wind jobs table
Offshore wind projects that have begun the federal permitting process, have acquired all the required federal permits, or have begun construction are included. The projects listed below were considered for the total jobs number. Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 as well as Skipjack 1 and Skipjack 2 were not included in the analysis because they are not currently being developed. The vast majority of the job numbers were obtained from the construction and operations plan (COP) submitted to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for each project, and all sources referenced, including the COPs, are listed in the source document for the table. When a range was given, the lower end of the range was used. When job years were given instead of jobs, the number of jobs was calculated by dividing the number of job years by the number of years for the given phase of the project and rounding down, providing a minimum number of jobs associated with the job years number that was provided. Projects were considered fully permitted federally if they had a COP approval.