Line up for offshore wind jobs
Developers hiring after years of promoting promise of work growing industry could create
At a 131-year-old maritime academy along Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts, people who will build the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm are learning the skills to stay safe while working around turbines at sea.
Some take to the tasks fairly easily since they’re veterans of marine fields or construction.
For others, it’s totally new to be using fall protection and sea survival equipment, climbing from a boat onto a ladder to get to a turbine and learning how to work hundreds of feet in the air.
Offshore wind developers are hiring, after years of touting the promise of tens of thousands of jobs the industry could create in the United States. To launch this new clean energy industry, they need plenty of workers with the right training and skills.
“It’s the sheer number of people we’re going to need in the timeframe that we need them,” said Jennifer Cullen, senior manager of labor relations and workforce development at Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts. “We’re combating this sense of, we’ve been talking about it for so long, ... is it actually coming? We’re telling people, yes, it’s here, it’s now.
“We’re building the turbines next year, and we’re going to be building many more wind farms after this,” she added.
Vineyard Wind is on track to be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S. The development follows the Cape Wind project, which would’ve been closer to the Massachusetts shore but failed after years of litigation and local opposition.
The Massachusetts Maritime Academy is the only place in Massachusetts offering the basic safety training designed by a nonprofit founded by wind turbine manufacturers and operators — the Global Wind Organisation — though training is offered in other states. Everyone who will go to a wind farm offshore must complete safety training, and most developers meet the requirement with the GWO program.
The course draws union workers and others eager to work on future wind farms that the Biden administration wants to dot U.S. coastlines to help fight climate change.
President Joe Biden set a goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, to power more than 10 million homes and create 80,000 jobs.
The payoff for offshore wind trainees is jobs with an average salary approaching $80,000 a year.
The students, wearing waterproof suits, they practice stepping off a vessel in Buzzards Bay and onto a boarding ladder connected to a turbine — a dangerous part of the job, especially in rough seas.
They step off the pier into the chilly bay waters to learn how to safely abandon a vessel or the turbine in an emergency. They inflate a life raft, climb in, and right it when it’s upside down.
To prepare for working at heights, they use a harness and fall protection gear to ascend and descend a turbine’s ladder. They practice lowering themselves by ropes from a 20-foot platform. A day is devoted to first aid basics and CPR, and they put out a small fire with extinguishers.
The maritime academy has historically focused on Coast Guard-approved training for professional mariners. Anticipating needs of the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, it expanded its courses in support of offshore wind in 2019.