In a huge hangar in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, a welder points a flaming torch at an aluminum slab. The hulls of three new ships, each about 27 meters long, have been formed. The first is scheduled to go to sea sometime in the spring to bring workers to wind turbines off the coast of England.
The United States has very little offshore wind sector served by these vessels. But as the Biden administration accelerates plans to decarbonize the power sector, turbines will sprout up along the coastline, creating demand for services at shipyards and manufacturing hubs from Brownsville, Texas to Albany, New York.
Rhode Island shipbuilder Senesco Marine has nearly doubled its workforce in recent months as it receives new orders for hybrid ferries and large crew transfers. A naval officer who is currently the CEO of the company. “But that’s not happening in shipbuilding.”
Nor is it happening in any clean energy sector in America. Across the country, new revolutions are underway in areas from solar to nuclear, from carbon capture to green hydrogen. Its goals are profound: revitalize the country’s Rust Belt, decarbonize the world’s largest economy, and seize control of the energy supply of the 21st century. A chain from China, the cleantech superpower of the world.
The world is just beginning to struggle with what that means. Less than three years later, the US abandoned the Paris Agreement on climate change, and then-President Donald Trump was touting an era of US energy dominance based on the country’s fossil fuel abundance. Europeans accused the United States of neglecting climate change.
Since then, President Joe Biden has passed sweeping legislation to reverse course. Last year’s massive Inflation Reduction Act and hundreds of billions of dollars in cleantech subsidies are meant to spur private sector investment and accelerate the country’s decarbonisation efforts.
Melissa Lott, director of research at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, said: “It’s industrial policy. It’s the kitchen sink.
Tax incentives make the U.S. attractive to investors, and cleantech developers say it’s sucking money out of other countries. Already, he has had $90 billion in capital plowed into new projects since the IRA passed last year, according to advocacy group Climate Power.
David Scaysbrook, Managing Partner of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a global cleantech private equity group, said: “And it will be for quite some time.”
Still, it’s a gamble for the United States, too. The sheer scale of protectionist rings and state interventions has raised alarm even among allies that once begged the United States to rejoin the fight against global climate change. French President Emmanuel Macron says the IRA could “divide the West”. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has complained that it would lead to “unfair competition” and “market closures”.
And the underlying effort to cut reliance on cheap Asian components that have accelerated progress in renewable energy in recent years has made many analysts skeptical. At a time when the White House is also battling high inflation and Russian aggression, can the US reset the global energy order, create high-paying cleantech jobs at home and cut emissions?
In a speech last April, Mr. Biden said, “There’s no reason why we can’t make wind turbine blades in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.”
“A global arms race for clean energy? Sure,” says Wood Mackenzie analyst Daniel Liu. “But no country can do it alone, so we need some cooperation.”
