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BATON ROUGE — Today, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that the Governor’s Office in coordination with the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Louisiana Economic Development and the Department of Natural Resources will host Louisiana Wind Week 2021 from June 21-25 through a series of online sessions that will look at how offshore wind energy could become a part of the state’s energy future.

“While Louisiana’s onshore wind resources are limited, Louisiana’s coast is ripe for wind energy development,” said Gov. Edwards. “Thanks to years of oil and gas exploration experience, Louisiana’s existing infrastructure, workforce and business community give us a strategic advantage in developing offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico and all coastal waters of the United States.”

For example, Louisiana companies have already leveraged their experience to help design, fabricate and install the nation’s first commercial offshore wind farm at the Block Island project off the coast of Rhode Island.

Louisiana Wind Week 2021 will consist of a series of Zoom webinars to be held from 9 to 11 a.m. (CDT) each day from June 21-25. Each session will focus on a different topic critical to the development of offshore wind and include a mix of presentations, panel discussions and Q&A with the public. Topics will include navigating the regulatory process, minimizing impacts to fish and wildlife, minimizing impacts to existing users in the Gulf of Mexico, connecting offshore wind to end users and leveraging Louisiana’s existing offshore energy industry.

The series of Louisiana-focused webinars follows the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) first Gulf of Mexico Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force meeting on June 15. At that meeting, which will also be online, BOEM will explain the offshore wind development process for federal waters and solicit input from federal, state, local and tribal elected officials and government representatives from Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama as it identifies potential wind lease areas and engages potentially impacted parties.

According to a 2020 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), wind energy has the greatest near-term potential for renewable energy development in the Gulf of Mexico. NREL conducted a follow up study on offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico and found that the Gulf has enough technical wind energy to produce twice the power currently consumed by Gulf States. The NREL analysis also estimated that a single 600-megawatt offshore wind project could support approximately 4,470 jobs with $445 million in gross domestic product (GDP) during construction and an ongoing 150 jobs with $14 million GDP annually from operation and maintenance labor, materials and services.

More information about Louisiana Wind Week 2021 and how to attend is available here.