Wind Farms To Be Built Off Ocean City Beach

OCEAN CITY, MD -- The Maryland Public Service Commission approved two offshore wind farms on Thursday off the coast of Ocean City. Upon completion of the project, Maryland will be home to the nation's largest offshore wind farms. The project has some massive benefits for Maryland, as well.

The two projects will bring 368 megawatts of wind energy capacity to Maryland, according to Denise Robbins, the Communications Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. The projects will yield over $1.8 billion of in-state spending as well as over $74 million in tax dollars over the next 20 years, according to a press release from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

The new wind farm will create 9,700 direct and indirect jobs, according to the press release. This high amount of jobs relates to national debates about jobs in energy production. President Trump promised to bring back coal jobs to the United States, but experts say that promise won't be kept, according to the Washington Post.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that in 2015, there were 65,971 coal mining jobs in the entire United States. That number, when combined with the 60,460 coal plant jobs nationwide in 2005, yields an approximate total of 126,431 coal jobs in the country. So, the two wind farms off the coast of one U.S. state would provide eight percent the jobs of the entire coal industry.

Renewable energy production often provides more jobs than the extraction industry does. The "Solar Jobs Census found there were 260,077 solar workers in 2016," according to the Solar Foundation, and that number is likely to grow with the advent of solar roofs currently being sold by Tesla, which promises immense amounts of energy. This compares to the approximate 396,000 jobs in the oil and natural gas industries combined.

Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said in the press release, "these wind farms will be truly pioneering facilities, leading Maryland and the nation toward a 21st century economy that combats climate change and creates jobs in droves at the same time."

"The Chesapeake Climate Action Network commends the PSC for correctly assessing the economic, health, and environmental gains integral to these projects," Tidwell said. He hopes that the recent approval of wind farms leads to more of the same, eventually leading to wind farms that will stretch from "Cape Cod, MA to Cape Hatteras, NC" one day, and said that such an investment would provide up to a third of the energy demand of the east coast.

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