Building a Domestic Offshore Wind Supply Chain

In March 2022, the Labor Energy Partnership (LEP)—a partnership of the Energy Futures Initiative and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)—brought together an extraordinary group of offshore wind leaders and experts for a private, virtual workshop on a series of four LEP-commissioned white papers. These papers contributed insights to building a robust domestic supply chain to support the emerging offshore wind industry in the United States and abroad.

The workshop, moderated by Kevin Knobloch, distinguished associate at EFI and president of Knobloch Energy, built on the discussion and conclusions of the first LEP offshore wind workshop held in March 2021.

The aim of this new workshop was to explore and discuss the issues raised in the four white papers (across three focused discussion sessions) and help shape recommendations for actions and policies that can help create a robust domestic offshore wind supply chain.

“This moment is our opportunity to meet our climate goals and economic goals at the same time. And part of that includes making sure that the jobs in the offshore wind supply chain are good, union jobs,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “These white papers will show us that the offshore wind supply chain is poised to take off, and help us build a road map to make that future a reality.”

This summary report seeks to capture the essence and any points of consensus of the rich discussion. The workshop was conducted under an understanding that this summary report will not attribute quotes to specific speakers by name or affiliation.