S3E18: Special Initiative on Offshore Wind’s Kris Ohleth speaks to the strong headwinds facing offshore wind

The flood of financial headlines on the offshore wind industry have been quite bearish in recent months. The industry has been buffetted by strong post-COVID headwinds – dramatic inflationary pressures and supply chain problems – that have rendered several Atlantic coast projects uneconomic. After writing down its assets by $2.3 billion, Orsted's stock has been punished by the market as the company threatens to walk away from uneconomic projects unless their terms can be renegotiated to reflect changed economic circumstances. Offering another barometer of the deep bear market for offshore wind were recent lease auctions in the U.S. and UK, which received little to no interest.

Putting this all into perspective for us is Kris Ohleth, executive director at the Special Initiative for Offshore Wind. While acknowledging the near- and medium-term challenges churning the waters for the industry, Ohleth remains bullish on the long-term prospects for offshore wind in the United States:

"If you look at the decarbonization and clean-energy goals that we have for this nation, there is literally and absolutely no way to meet them without offshore wind. It is a technology of scale that is the only one, in fact, available for coastal states – for many coastal states in the United States – to meet their state and the overall national clean-energy targets that we need, especially as we continue to electrify our transportation systems and our building units. So there's a real demand for it. And I believe that the market will recorrect and we will make additional incremental progress towards commercialization in the United States in the next decade."

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