America’s dependence on foreign oil is a serious threat to our economic and national security. Eighty percent of the homes in our state rely on heating oil, leaving Maine families extremely vulnerable to rising crude oil prices. By 2018, experts estimate that the cost of energy, including gasoline, heating oil and electricity, could consume as much as 40 percent of the average Maine household’s income. These high costs would also harm the major industries that drive our economy and the small businesses that are the backbone of our communities.
Our nation must embrace a comprehensive strategy to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, our reliance on foreign oil. We must expand and diversify American energy resources and, in doing so, improve our environment. This will require dramatic changes in public policy, a commitment to new technology, and, an investment in alternative energy.
That is why I was delighted that U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently agreed to my request that he meet with Governor Baldacci and the rest of Maine’s Congressional delegation, as well as a University of Maine professor, to discuss renewable energy demonstration projects in the State of Maine. These projects could serve as a national model for the “green” energy economy.
During our meeting with Secretary Chu, Dr. Habib Dagher, a professor at the University of Maine and Director of the Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center, outlined an ambitious proposal to establish a National Center for Deepwater Offshore Wind Research at UMaine. Through his remarkable work in engineered wood composites, I have come to know Dr. Dagher as someone with great vision. He understands, perhaps better than anyone I have ever met, how to take the theoretical and make it practical. His plan to create a partnership between the State of Maine and the Department of Energy (DOE) to establish this important research center would eventually help meet the DOE’s goal of getting 20 percent of our nation’s electricity from wind power by the year 2030.
Maine is the ideal location for a National Center for Deepwater Offshore Wind Research because we have some of the strongest and most consistent winds in the nation off our shore. In fact, more than eight percent of all U.S. deepwater offshore wind energy is in the Gulf of Maine. During our meeting, Dr. Dagher spoke of the potential for wind power to supply as much as 40 percent of the nation’s electricity, calling the Gulf of Maine the “Saudi Arabia of wind.” Deep, offshore wind production, out-of-sight from land, could provide an affordable source of renewable electricity directly to the country’s population centers on each coast. In addition, it would diversify Maine’s energy supply so that people could switch from using home heating oil to heat pumps, and it would create thousands of new jobs.
Unlocking this vast energy potential requires the development of next generation fixed foundation offshore wind turbine technologies, as well as testing of floating platforms prototypes. The University of Maine is the ideal partner for this project because researchers at the University’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center are already working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on offshore wind technologies, and construction is currently underway on a facility for wind blade prototyping.
Estimates are that the development of just five gigawatts of offshore wind in Maine could attract $20 billion of investment to the state and could create more than 15,000 green energy jobs that would be sustained over 30 years. Together with a massive weatherization program and conversion to electric heating pumps and electric vehicles, Maine could transform its economy and become the “greenest” state in the nation.
Though ending our dependence on foreign oil and securing our own energy future is a great technological challenge, we must begin to make the investments now. Solving the energy crisis requires the entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector, partnerships at the state and federal level, an understanding of the specific economic and environmental issues at stake, and a commitment to the research and development of new technologies. Maine can live up to its motto, “Dirigo,” and lead the way.