Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed Wednesday two more offshore wind farms off the coast of Long Island as part of a broad increase in renewable energy planned across New York State.
One will be located more than 20 miles off Jones Beach, the other will be more than 60 miles off Montauk Point, and each will have more than 90 turbines for a combined output of about 2,500 megawatts, the governor said.
“Don’t worry, neither will be visible from the shore,” Cuomo said Wednesday in part three of his four-part State of The State address, which was broken up into chunks this year.
He called it the largest production of renewable energy by any state in U.S. history.
The transmission line for the turbines off Jones Beach will connect on land at Oceanside and the line for the Montauk wind farm will travel 200 miles under the Long Island Sound to Astoria, Queens.
The state previously started on the 880-megawatt Sunrise Wind Project, located east of Long Island and the 816-megawatt Empire Wind Project, located 14 miles southeast of Manhattan.
To support the effort, Cuomo also announced the state is investing $20 million in a new Offshore Wind Training Institute at SUNY Stony Brook and Farmingdale State College that will begin certifying and training individuals this year.
“We will train 2,500 workers beginning in the summer of 2021,” he said. “But we won’t only be training for wind and solar projects. The evolution to green energy will involve replacing home heating and cooling systems in approximately 130,000 buildings with heat pumps and geothermal heating. We will train workers for those positions also.”
