Policy Recommendations

Maximize the Opportunities of Louisiana’s Existing Assets: Workforce, Ports, Shipping and Vessel Operations, and Manufacturing

• The state should conduct a study to evaluate transferrable skills in Louisiana’s existing workforce (especially in the oil and gas sector) and how these skills correspond to the skills needed to succeed in the offshore wind industry.
• Louisiana’s state universities and Community and Technical College System, in collaboration with companies across the offshore wind industry, should create short-term certificate programs that can be ‘stacked’ to provide an alternative to the current higher education system.
• State and local governments should conduct outreach programs to encourage young people in Louisiana to enter skilled trades, with a focus on marginalized communities.
• The state should conduct a state-level mapping and strategic planning exercise that maps out the unique advantages and roles each of Louisiana’s ports could play in the offshore wind industry.
• Congress should provide additional funds through MARAD to support ports making infrastructure improvements specifically to accommodate offshore wind.
• The state should create an education and outreach program for vessel companies with operations in Louisiana about opportunities in offshore wind industry and ways to get involved.
• Congress or the U.S. Department of Energy should create a funding opportunity for shipbuilding companies to de-risk early investments into vessel construction, including minimum payments to offset unplanned downtime and/or loan guarantees.
• The federal government should create grant and loan programs to help offshore wind component manufacturers increase their production capacity, for instance by integrating automated processes into their manufacturing facilities.

Meet the Needs of Louisiana’s Offshore Wind Industry: Create a Long-Term Project Pipeline, Utilize Effective Community Engagement and Benefits Sharing, and De-Risk Supply Chain Investments

• BOEM should announce forthcoming lease areas on a predictable timeline to reduce uncertainty in the industry.
• The state, in consultation with the industry, should create accessible outreach materials to educate the general public in Louisiana on offshore wind. These materials should be written in layman’s terms and highlight costs and benefits.
• BOEM and the state government should work to aggregate information collected from stakeholder engagement exercises conducted by companies pre-leasing to be able to have winning bidders use upon granting of a lease.
• The Loan Programs Office or Department of Defense should provide loan guarantees or minimum payments for companies engaged in the offshore wind supply chain to de-risk their up-front capital investments.

Address Remaining Uncertainties, Including Planning for End Use, Exploring Environmental Considerations, and Managing for the Gulf of Mexico’s Unique Conditions

• Louisiana should formalize the 5 GW offshore wind procurement goal by 2030 established in the Climate Action Plan into a procurement target supported by legislation.
• Louisiana should engage in MISO’s Long-Range Transmission Planning process, with particular emphasis on connecting offshore wind power to users.
• The Louisiana Public Service Commission should open a docket on offshore wind as soon as possible to consider whether and how to connect new projects that may be built in the Lake Charles lease area.
• The state should conduct preemptive transmission planning study for offshore wind.
• Louisiana should work with Texas to create a pool of funds that can support research into wildlife populations in the Gulf of Mexico and strategies to reduce impacts to these populations.
• State regulations relating to offshore wind development should set best management practices for operations, including setting vessel speeds and wildlife monitoring.
• NOAA should fund studies to map migratory bird pathways in the Gulf more precisely to support more wildlife-conscious design and deployment.
• Congress and the Louisiana state legislature should each pass legislation that would direct a dedicated percentage of revenue from Louisiana offshore wind leases in both federal and state waters to coastal restoration efforts.
• NOAA should fund hurricane studies to map conditions at the level of granularity specific to offshore wind power generation to support design for the Gulf.

Conclusion

Nationally, momentum is accelerating for offshore wind, with more than 40 GW in the pipeline for development by 2040, and commitments across states covering both project procurement and supply chain development. Louisiana has a tremendous opportunity to both develop its own offshore wind projects and supply vessels, components, inputs, and skilled workers to support projects around the country. Across Louisiana, policymakers, communities, local businesses, educational providers, and economic development organizations are excited about the opportunity offshore wind could bring and are preparing for the industry’s growth in the state. The state’s legacy of expertise in offshore energy development, shipbuilding, and manufacturing could allow its companies and workers to lead the nation in developing this nascent industry. However, in order to realize its potential, significant up-front investments are required to prepare the region’s infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, and workforce to accommodate the unique needs of the offshore wind industry. Successfully preparing for offshore wind in Louisiana will necessitate addressing a number of uncertainties, including the need for a long-term project pipeline, as well as a long-term plan to connect power to users in a way that is equitable, efficient, and prescient. With strategic planning and proactive investments, Louisiana can capitalize on several key advantages to be a global leader in the offshore wind industry.

View more from the C2ES Regional Roundtable series here.

The post Securing Louisiana’s Role in the Offshore Wind Industry appeared first on Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

Policy Recommendations

Attract new climate-aligned manufacturing

• State government or regional economic development organizations should commission a clean energy supply chain study for Southwestern Pennsylvania to understand existing industry presence, potential growth opportunities, and regional assets that can help attract new, climate-aligned manufacturing to the region.

Develop a stronger Innovation ecosystem

• Regional economic development organizations, national labs, the private sector, government, and universities should collaborate to create a regional innovation program focused on decarbonizing the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
• The state should develop a state strategy for innovation that increases funding for Pennsylvania’s innovation programs and seeks to develop innovation hubs throughout the state.

Enhance industrial infrastructure

• Bolster DCED’s redevelopment playbook program for coal plants, mine lands, industrial sites, and brownfields across the state.

Create a coordinated regional strategic planning for manufacturing

• State government, economic development organizations, nonprofits, and industry should collaborate to form a regional planning body to advance climate-aligned decarbonized manufacturing in SWPA.

Enhance rural infrastructure and capacity

• Congress should expand federal resources to support local capacity building and transition planning in rural and energy communities.
• Congress should codify the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization and provide funding to expand its services across energy communities impacted by the energy transition.
• The state or regional organizations should create community-to-community learning networks centered on overcoming economic development challenges.

Decarbonize manufacturing

• The state should create a state-level ‘Buy Clean’ program to drive markets for low-carbon manufactured products.
• The state should fund demonstration projects to pilot energy efficiency and fuel switching in a variety of industrial operations.
• The state should place more emphasis on industrial decarbonization strategies when creating the next state Climate Action Plan.

Bolster renewable energy

• The state should pass legislation to modernize the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard by bolstering the role for zero- emitting energy sources and aligning it with federal climate goals.
• The state should commission a study to explore opportunities and challenges to expanding renewable energy generation in SWPA, including identification of sites suit- able for various types of resource development.

Prepare the workforce

• Training providers, industry, government, and labor unions should expand training and certification opportunities for the clean energy industry in Pennsylvania, including in construction and renewable energy.
• State government, industry, and workforce development organizations should partner to expand on-the-job training opportunities (e.g., apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships) for young people to gain real-world work experience in the clean energy industry.

Invest in equity and environmental justice

• The state should create a state-level climate justice initiative that ensures the benefits from climate and clean energy investments in the state reach environmental justice and other marginalized communities.

Conclusion

With a robust history in the manufacturing sector, a skilled workforce, an emphasis on innovation, and ample industrial infrastructure, Southwestern Pennsylvania is well-positioned to become an investment destination for climate-aligned manufacturing. Stakeholders across the region have expressed interest and excitement about attracting such investment, in particular in industries that manufacture technologies and goods critical to the clean energy transition. But while there is high potential in Southwestern Pennsylvania, there are also considerable challenges to overcome to help the region thrive in a net-zero economy. Investments in strategic planning, rural capacity building, renewable energy, industrial decarbonization, environmental justice, and other needs are all required to help Southwestern Pennsylvania compete in a global economy increasingly pushed by the demand for sustainability. Such investments can help revitalize local economies across the region and secure Southwestern Pennsylvania’s long-term prosperity in a fully decarbonized future.

View more from the C2ES Regional Roundtable series here.

The post Manufacturing a Decarbonized Future in Southwestern Pennsylvania appeared first on Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

This brief provides insights from a C2ES roundtable held in May 2022 that explored strategies to decarbonize Louisianian industry in a way that benefits not only the climate, but also the state’s economic competitiveness and the health and prosperity of its residents. It highlights steps needed for Louisiana to decarbonize its industrial sector, the necessity of making communities and workers partners in decarbonization efforts, and processes that can ensure a just, inclusive, and equitable industrial transformation in the state.

The post Decarbonizing Louisiana’s Industrial Sector: Community-Centric Approaches appeared first on Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

PA also faces numerous barriers, though, including high upfront costs, less applicability to small and diversified farming operations, lack of broadband connectivity, data privacy concerns, difficulty with interoperability between technologies, and producer skepticism. As a result, the promised PA ‘revolution’ may never be fully realized, although expanding PA adoption even absent industry-wide transformation still offers tangible benefits.

To address barriers and maximize PA’s potential, policymakers should take action in the following key areas:

• Research, development, and demonstration: To better characterize PA’s climate benefits in various production systems, research needs to be ramped up to strengthen the climate case for PA investments and identify technologies with the highest potential. PA technologies also need to be developed that can be applied to a diversity of farming systems, beyond large-scale, monocultured row crops. In addition, demonstration efforts will be critical to scaling PA by allowing producers to see its impacts firsthand.
• Enabling support for producers: Multiple PA technologies have high barriers to entry (e.g., broadband requirements, upfront cost), and the abundance of information generated by PA equipment can make it challenging for producers to transform that data into climate-smart decisions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its partners should address adoption barriers by investing in high-quality broadband and strengthening incentives for PA, while assisting producers to interpret PA data in ways that result in climate benefits.
• Data considerations: USDA, Congress, the private sector, and producers need to coordinate to address data challenges that can both limit PA adoption and dampen the utility of PA data. This includes addressing concerns with data privacy in the industry and enhancing the interoperability of PA equipment.

By taking action in these key areas, policymakers can help precision agriculture technologies play an important role in maintaining the productivity of American agriculture while delivering benefits for producers, improving environmental outcomes, and enhancing the sector’s role in meeting economy-wide net-zero goals.

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