Governor Hochul: “The South Fork Wind Project is nothing short of a triumph of New York ambition. It's a truly momentous occasion for this clean energy announcement, and I'm proud to state that the rest of the nation is watching. And this will serve as a beacon for the rest of the nation, a statement to everyone of what is possible, and this will be emulated time and time again.”
Hochul: “New York is ready to meet this moment and confront any challenges that stand in our way. My friends, this is just the beginning... together, we're going to build a New York that innovates and thinks dynamically and creatively and is proactive about addressing the future.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul, alongside the United States Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and other elected officials, announced the completion of the landmark South Fork Wind project, with all 12 offshore wind turbines constructed and the wind farm successfully delivering power to Long Island and the Rockaways. Today marks a historic milestone as New York becomes home to America’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm.
B-ROLL of the Governor activating the offshore wind turbines can be found on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Welcome. Today at long last, we flip the switch and turn on the future. The future of power generated by the winds. The winds of change. A long time ago there was a song called winds of change, are you familiar with it? Today we're making an incredible milestone of progress for New York. The completion of the very first of its kind — not just for New York, not just for the northeast — but for all of America: a historic green energy project, wind turbines to power the future.
Let's give that a round of applause.
Secretary Deb Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior has joined us all the way from Washington, or wherever, she's traveling all over America. We are honored to have her. It was almost exactly two years ago. Now, how likely is that? Projects on time. It's extraordinary. We're here to celebrate that as well.
But two years ago, we came here to celebrate and had shovels in our hands — and talk about the groundbreaking. And what a day that was. So, Madam Secretary, welcome. You are here, welcome in the State of New York. Any time. We are grateful for your public service.
Let's give a round of applause. Our federal partners, NOAA and BOEM, the Permitting Council. We thank them as well. Ed Romaine, our County Executive. Take a bow, Ed Romaine. Way to play it, you don't have to be there for the beginning, but you get the credit at the end. So well done, Mr. County Executive. And Steve Bellone who was here from the very beginning. We thank him for his support and the whole Legislature, the county Legislature, I would thank them as well.
Also, supervisors. Now I spent 14 years town board member — ultimate respect for our supervisors. Let's give Kathee Burke-Gonzalez a round of applause. And the town board members, from East Hampton and Southampton, you had to make some tough decisions. This was not an easy lift for you because you certainly heard from a lot of constituents.
I understand that pressure and I commend you for powering through all that and making sure that we could be here today. So, a round of applause for our local elected officials as well. But you need business partners. Joe Nolan, the CEO of Eversource. Thank you, Joe. It's extraordinary to have you here today.
To mark this momentous occasion and Troy Patton representing the CEO of Ørsted,
I want to thank Ørsted and all of our great friends there as well. Members of my administration, our Secretary of State, Robert Rodriguez, Doreen Harris, the President and CEO of NYSERDA, and Justin Driscoll, the President and CEO of NYPA. These are my power people. Let's give them a round of applause.
Friends from labor, anybody from labor in the room? Matti Aracich and Ryan Stanton. Thank you. When you want something done, you call men and women of labor and what an extraordinary credit to them for what they did. This is unprecedented. There was not a playbook for this at apprentice school, I guarantee it.
And everybody had to deal with new technologies and new challenges to go out 35 miles from the shore and get something done that is extraordinary. So, thank you, not just labor here in the State of New York, but throughout the northeast and partners of ours. Also, this great institution, New York State's flagship institution, Stony Brook University, thank you for welcoming us here.
The South Fork Wind Project is nothing short of a triumph of New York ambition. It's a truly momentous occasion for this clean energy announcement, and I'm proud to state that the rest of the nation is watching. This is how you get it done. And working closely with the Biden administration, the President made this one of his top priorities when he was elected back in 2020, that he wanted to push hard — push this nation — toward a greener, more sustainable future and I want to give him a lot of credit for putting his mark on what is happening here today. And this will serve as a beacon for the rest of the nation; a statement to everyone of what is possible, and this will be emulated time and time again.
It's never been more important for us as New Yorkers to lead as we build a greener tomorrow for our children. As I said, we broke ground two years ago. I said, “We have a responsibility to reimagine and realize a clean energy future.” Everyone on Long Island knows what I'm talking about. It was just earlier this year the County Executive — Supervisor Richie Schaffer — we visited Overlook Beach.
And we saw the damage there — not just there, but at Gilgo Beach and Fire Island — all the beaches that are absolutely battered with the force of Mother Nature and the waves that came crashing and destroying all the work that had been done to restore the beaches after Hurricane Sandy. This is what we're so vulnerable to.
This is what we're exposed to. And we saw that devastation. Angry surges that are getting more and more frequent. Water temperatures are soaring. How disruptive this is to our nautical ecosystems, but also the effect it has on the ferocity of the winds and the waves. Sea levels are climbing — certainly dangerous when we're surrounded by water here.
And it seems to me as someone who goes to all the disasters in person, we seem to be getting these 1,000-year events every year or so. So, it's no mystery what's causing this. People are finally “woke” enough to what has been happening. Others have talked about this for years. You think about Al Gore sounding the warning years and years ago.
I was a young staffer on Capitol Hill right after Jimmy Carter left town. And Jimmy Carter had all kinds of incentives to stimulate the growth of the clean energy future, tax credits for wind and solar and all kinds of ideas people thought were too crazy, and they were repealed by the Ronald Reagan Budget.
And we stood together as young staffers and said, what's going to happen now? Because Jimmy Carter had envisioned a future free from being strangled by fossil fuels. Especially when we were so reliant on OPEC in the Middle East. None of you are old enough to remember that, but I do. You could only get gasoline every other day based on your license plate number. Anybody remember that? We said we'll never go back to that, and we went backwards. Just imagine our world today If we had stayed on the path that we had been put on, that this would've been happening even 30 years ago, 40 years ago. But we'll make up for lost time now. I don't want to get depressed over this.
But I want to make sure that we have that sense of urgency that some had back then, but others did not. I hope there's a collective sense of urgency around this now. And the past leaders have failed. When people proposed taking steps forward, people denied the science. We are only taking baby steps.
But under my watch as the Governor of the greatest state in the nation, nothing will stand in our way. New York has some of the most ambitious energy goals in the nation: 70 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2030, zero emissions electric grid by 2040, and 85 percent reduction – statewide reduction – in climate pollution by 2050.
I'm going to stick around long enough to make sure we get it done. In helping to achieve these goals, it is impossible to overstate how transformative the South Fork Wind Project is. Again, the first utility scale project of its kind in America. Numbers will tell the story. 12 – that's how many offshore turbines Ørsted and Eversource have built.
How many homes? 70,000 homes, to start, will be powered with the power of these turbines? 60,000. That’s the number of 6 million tons of carbon emissions; the equivalent of 60,000 cars on our road that will be eliminated. 60,000 cars, imagine that. And 10,000 – one of my favorite numbers – it's the number of jobs New York is creating to support the offshore wind industry alone.
And just to brag one more time, one more number is zero. That's how many other completed projects exist in the United States. So, it's the very first American made offshore substation, quite a feat. The first offshore wind farm to use American made and crewed service operations vessel and this future defining project.
As I mentioned before, it was made by union workers, and they have had a hand in every great infrastructure achievement in our history. And I want to thank them for being part of this commitment and making sure we have the skilled workforce. We have Mattie Aracich here. We talk about this all the time. Mattie and our friends here at the Building Trades and the Long Island Building Association, all of the people who are understanding how important this is.
If we don't have people at the right training, we won't be able to accomplish more. So, it's that specialized skill – it's what we have to do to make sure that everyone has that opportunity. And I want to diversify this workforce, I want to see more women on the sites. I want to see more people of color on the sites. And Mattie knows that. And Ryan Stanton knows that as well. So, we're investing money. I can't magically make it happen. We're investing $200 million in workforce development to train New Yorkers for the jobs of tomorrow – starting on our SUNY campuses to prepare students for careers in offshore wind, and we're touting that today. We're going to stand up a brand-new domestic supply chain. You know why? Because I don't ever want to be vulnerable to geopolitical concerns or supply chains or ships that are jammed up in ports.
I'm not predicting another COVID event, but my God, we learned some lessons and we have to make sure we build them here in America and build them here in the State of New York. And that's how we can be that regional hub of offshore wind manufacturing. And to make that happen, we're investing $500 million in state money to build port and supply chain infrastructure.
But also, as I mentioned, this was a local effort, built by the community for the community. And the workers you just saw in that video a couple minutes ago, like Sean Johnson, the turbine technician, grew up right here in Amityville, and is building a better future for his daughter. Matt Laub, the foreman from Long Island who's a union guy through and through. Alessandra Fernandes, another worker, union worker, iron worker.
My uncle was an iron worker, I had uncles – I had plumbers, I had steel workers. I had it all in my family. So, I have a lot of regard for the hard work they do, the training that goes into it. And she grew up right here in Southampton. And so also because such an important part of this is conservation, and its environmental impact, always at the top of our priorities. I'm so glad to see Jessica James has joined us, and another champion was Judith Hope, who got a lot of this going. Remember Judith Hope? She's a great friend of ours. Judith Hope, I mean, she is super. Jessica's right down the road in Montauk. I just want to thank all the people who made this happen.
Again, the town board, the local town board, so critical to this. And I want to give everyone who played a role in this at the local level, local government, county government, please stand up and take a round of applause. Come on, stand up.
Thank you. Thank you all. And in a couple of moments when we flip this switch. It really works. In just a few minutes, we'll officially bring the turbines online, and I assure you, it'll have national ramifications. But I know no one will ever forget the community behind this, the communities that stood up and said, we can get this done, we can get this done.
So, that is also what we're celebrating, is the communities taking that step forward into the future. This is all part of New York's emergence into the 21st century. But, again, as New Yorkers, we're just not satisfied with the merging, we want to dominate. And so, investments like this are a statement of our intent. The gauntlet is being thrown down to emphasize that New York is ready to meet this moment and confront any challenges that stand in our way. My friends, this is just the beginning, just the beginning. More projects coming down the pipeline, more grounds to break and ribbons to cut. And when it comes to offshore wind, we've just scratched the surface.
Together, we're going to build a New York that innovates and thinks dynamically and creatively and is proactive about addressing the future. And again, lastly, who are we doing this for? We're doing it for future generations. They'll look back on this day, just like I look back on those dark days when we had the opportunity to seize the future back in the 1980s and we did not. Others will look back at this day in 2024 and say, we did. We did it. We are undaunted, we are fearless, we marched in the future and said, because we have no choice. Mother Nature is not waiting for us.
She is making sure we hear her loud and clear. Stop assaulting our Earth. And with this move today, we are doing our part, an extraordinary part, in leading that future for future generations. And I want to thank everyone because nothing matters as much as this. Thank you, my friends, and congratulations. With that, thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a high honor for me to present the Secretary of the Interior, Debra Haaland, and I want to thank her for, again, her passion for these projects and her strong will and the work with the Biden Administration is one of the reasons we're here today and getting this done. Secretary Haaland.