Big Blow: Offshore Wind Power’s Devastating Costs and Impacts on North Carolina

By Jon Sanders, Director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life, and Research Editor at the John Locke Foundation with American Experiment Policy Fellow Isaac Orr and Policy Analyst Mitch Rolling.

One of President Joe Biden’s day-one executive orders sought to double offshore wind by 2030. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper issued an executive order to develop 2.8 gigawatts (GW) of off-shore wind by 2030 and 8 GW by 2040. Both Biden and Cooper justified their orders by declaring they would fight climate change, create jobs, and grow the economy.

Such an extreme, rushed government intervention in the critical energy section makes it imperative for policymakers and the public to ask hard questions about it, which this paper seeks to do. It is indebted to the work of Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr from Center of the American Experiment in analyzing and estimating the cost to North Carolina’s electricity consumers building and operating 8 GW of new offshore wind capacity. It also offers several areas worth further exploration.

Click the “Download PDF” button to read the report.