From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“New Jersey is betting big on offshore wind — not just to reduce carbon emissions, but with high hopes of transforming into a dominant player in renewable energy along the East Coast and wresting away manufacturing dominated by Europe.

“The state’s powerful Democrats, unions, and business leaders say their ambition means jobs, lots of them, over the next two decades or longer.

“We’re talking about a whole new workforce of construction and maintenance jobs, work for architects and engineers of all types, mapping and surveying, computer and telecommunications, transportation and maintenance jobs,” said Jane Asselta, vice president of the Southern New Jersey Economic Development Council, a nonprofit.

“Painting and skilled metal manufacturing jobs, legal, accounting, banking, and financial services. The list of services and materials needed goes on and on,” Asselta said. “Not since the casino industry came to South Jersey have we seen a workforce of this size being created.”

How big is New Jersey aiming?

This big:

The numbers for one turbine (again from the Philadelphia Enquirer):

• A five-inch-thick, 400-foot-long, 2,500-ton steel monopile gets driven into the ocean floor as the foundation.

• A tower, a rotating nacelle that contains a drive train, and three 305-foot-long blades are attached atop each monopile.

• When complete, the GE Haliade-X turbine will rise 853 feet above the Atlantic Ocean — roughly as tall as the Two Liberty Place skyscraper in Philadelphia.

Perhaps the most amazing number of all: with one rotation, one of these wind turbines basically powers one house for one day!

Mindblowing.

The first project to get underway will have up to 99 of these babies. Each time they all rotate: 99 houses sorted for the day. 99 for the next rotation. 99 for the next rotation…

I believe you get the picture.

“When complete in 2024 the wind farm, located in federal waters, will generate 1,100 megawatts, enough to annually power 500,000 homes as one of the largest facilities of its kind in the United States.

“But that’s just the start of the state’s plan under Gov. Phil Murphy. New Jersey expects five more projects, or “solicitations,” meaning many more turbines will be needed to achieve the goal of 7,500 megawatts through 2035, enough to power 3.2 million homes. The next solicitation to be awarded this year could be twice the size of Ocean Wind.”

As for the environmental impact of actually building wind turbines, with these massive ones it takes a matter of months for the Co2 emitted to build them (using non-renewable energy sources) to be paid back into the system as renewable energy.

However, this renewable energy cannot be used to make the concrete needed to build future turbines, since concrete requires crazy high temperatures that currently must come from burning fossil fuels, not electricity. I need to look a little more into how it all balances out (or doesn’t) in the end. Does making all that concrete for so many wind turbines stuff up global emissions targets anyway?

It’s a good question.