Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Climate Crisis

Virginia’s bid to be Saudi Arabia of Offshore Wind, Bolstered by Dem IRA, to Save Consumers Billions

Juan Cole 08/10/2022

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Virginia’s State Corporation Commission on Friday approved America’s largest offshore wind farm project, a 2.6 gigawatt facility to be constructed by Dominion Energy 27 miles out from Virginia Beach.

The project could get some help from the Democratic Party Inflation Reduction Act, which the House will likely finalize soon, and which has $260 billion for encouraging things like the development of offshore wind farms.

The Coastal Virginian Offshore Wind (CVOW) development will be erected on a 112,800-acre tract leased from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Having BOEM lease US federal waters for such offshore installations was pushed by President Joe Biden, and the leases are being rolled out on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico, promising new gigawatts in offshore wind energy. Biden is aiming for 30 GW of offshore wind electric generation by 2030.

Scheduled to be completed by 2026, only four years from now, the wind farm will power 660,000 homes. That is one-fifth of the state’s 3,184,121 households. It will avoid 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Dominion estimates that the new facility will save consumers at least $3 billion during the first ten years of its operation. Wind energy does not need fuel, and if methane gas prices remain high, the company notes that savings could rocket to $6 billion.


Virginia and North Carolina hope to obtain new renewable energy from the Dominion Energy project (top) and the Kitty Hawk development.- Tufts University School of Engineering image.

The Dominion project will bring a thousand long term jobs to the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, and will generate hundreds of jobs during construction.

The Virginia State Corporation Committee put the onus on Dominion, rather than consumers, to cover cost over-runs and delays and to deal with other potential setbacks, which the Dominion CEO called “unacceptable.” It remains to be seen whether this requirement will be viewed as a deal-killer by Dominion, especially now in the light of its likely access to IRA funding and tax offsets. VSCC members pointed out that having private companies carry out such projects is not the only way to go forward. Despite its current governor, there are a lot of visionary progressives in Virginia.

For scale, we should note that the largest existing offshore wind farm is the Britain’s Hornsea 1, at 1.2 gigawatts, so Virginia’s new installation will be more than twice as big. There are, however, even bigger offshore wind farms in the pipeline in Europe, including Dogger Bank off Yorkshire in the UK, with a planned 3.6 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity. The Swedish firm OX2 is even more ambitious, aiming at a 5.5 gigawatt facility in the Baltic Sea, to come online in 2030.

The US has been a laggard in offshore wind. In the UK, the world leader in this industry, offshore wind is expected to generate more than a third of all electricity by 2030. And that is on top of onshore wind facilities.

Featured image courtesy Dominion.

Filed Under: Climate Crisis, Environmentalism, Featured, Sea Level, Super Storms, wind energy

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Israel's Netanyahu banks on TACO Trump as he Launches War on Iran to disrupt Negotiations
  • Iran's Hypersonic Missiles Hit Israeli Refinery, Military Sites, as Israel does the same to Tehran
  • Why did Israel defy Trump – and risk a major War – by striking Iran now? And what happens next?
  • A Pariah State? Western Nations Sanction Israeli Cabinet Members
  • Iraqi Shiites Demand Expulsion of US Troops after Israel Attacks Iran

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved