Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul and Suffolk County Executive Bellone Announce Land Transfer to Bring National Offshore Wind Training Center to Suffolk County and Train New Yorkers for Green Jobs

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul and Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone announced the successful land transfer between New York State and Suffolk County to bring a National Offshore Wind Training Center to New York. The Governor also launched a $9 million competitive opportunity through the State's Offshore Wind Training Institute, led by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority in collaboration with the State University of New York Farmingdale State College and Stony Brook University, for expanded offshore wind workforce development and training initiatives to address workforce gaps and prepare New Yorkers for high-growth jobs in this growing industry. Today's announcements represent continued progress to establish New York State as the nation's primary hub for offshore wind and supports the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goal to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Good morning. Thank you so much for the warm welcome. Thank you. The day has finally arrived. First of all, I know many of our state and Assembly partners were acknowledged, and I appreciate all they do for us. First of all, let's start with Steve Bellone. You'll be hearing from Steve in a couple of minutes, but thank you for getting this over the finish line, into the end zone, the home run, whatever sports analogy you want. You got the job done working in great partnership, and that's what leadership's all about. Ladies and gentlemen, our great County Executive, Steve Bellone.

You'll also be hearing from Roger Clayman, the Secretary Treasurer of the National Offshore Wind Training Center. Kind of got a big bump in title there since Long Island Federation, right? Very impressive. Roger, great to have you as a partner on this as well. Adrienne Esposito, Citizens Campaign for the Environment. Nothing of consequence related to the environment happens on Long Island without you being involved, and your incredible organization. Let's give her another round of applause as well. Matty Aracich, the President of the Building Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and also President of the National Offshore Wind Training Center. This is being built by hardworking men and women of labor here on Long Island. I want to thank you for being their leader as well.

You heard their names, but I'm going to say them again because this is the dream team that you sent to Albany to represent you, and one of the reasons we have resources coming back constantly to Long Island. Senator John Brooks, let's give him a round of applause. Senator Kevin Thomas is here. Assmeblymember Steve Englebright is here. Assemblymember Chuck Lavine is here. Assemblymember Taylor Darling. Assemblymember Kim John-Pierre is here. And all the partners in government - Commissioner Dominguez.

Doreen, whenever Doreen's there, you know good things are happening as well. So, I want to thank you for your great leadership of NYSERDA as well. Doreen Harris, and also everyone from Eversource and Ørsted and everyone who made this happen magically happen as well as our host here at the Suffolk Community College. This is a great organization. It's the largest community college system in our state, over 22,000 young people being educated here. And I want to thank the President here for joining us as well. We also have the Presidents of Farmingdale here. Is John here? John? John's here. John Nader. And Stony Brook, our flagship institution. So, let's make sure we give a round of applause for Maureen as well. Thank you.

I'm glad to be back on Long Island again. Once again, talking about the future, and we know that the future does lie in clean energy, and right here that means offshore wind. I have been talking about this for such a long time, speaking at offshore wind conferences in the city and all over because I've always believed that this is a place that we could designate as the epicenter of the offshore wind industry, not just for this state, but for this country. And today, we're here to talk about the steps to make that happen. But I also come here with this strong sense of history, not just about the future.

We're talking about the history because I grew up in a part of our state where there wasn't a lot of reverence for the environment. When you grew up in Lackawanna, New York, and as a child, you just assumed that the skies were supposed to be orange because that's the color of the smoke spilling out the smokestacks where dad and grandpa and his brother's worked. Lackawanna, New York, where I was born. But also not just the air, the water, one of the largest fresh water bodies of water on this earth. Lake Erie was contaminated, and we visibly saw the daily dumping of what looked like molten lava into that lake, and we swam in that lake. It's actually amazing that we're all still alive when you think about it. But it was a time when people put the premium on the jobs, and literally this was just down the road from Love Canal. So, when you talk about being an environmentalist, this is the world I came from because I've seen the scourge of assaults from mankind on Mother Nature and what it did. And I'm proud to have lived at a time where we had the enlightened view that that should stop, but also how do we transition to a different future?

Yes, that is in the rear-view mirror now, but what does the new future look like? And it really, truly is offshore wind. I mean, this is where it's happening. It's plentiful supply. It's God-given. It's always going to be there. And I'm so proud that we can make these changes because we've seen the battering that Long Island has taken as a result of climate change. I've said before, we're the first generation to truly feel the effects of climate change. We're also the last generation that can do anything about it. And we think about what happened with Sandy just a decade ago, I was going to say, we were going to celebrate - you don't celebrate a hurricane that took the lives of countless innocent people, destroyed livelihoods, destroyed businesses, battered our psyche when you felt so vulnerable. And we've been spending a decade rebuilding. But you're always feeling that vulnerability again that there's always that next storm. The so-called 500-year, 1,000-year events that come every couple of years now. So, those once-in-a-generation ideas seem to pop up every year somewhere in our state.

Unbeatable, unbearable heat waves that are happening all over our country, volatile energy costs driven because of climate change and truly a worsening of the quality of life for everyone. That's the cost of climate change, and we will be the ones who are judged by how we seize this moment - and do we really make a difference? Or do we just pass the torch the next generation and say it's their problem? That's not happening in our New York. And it's not happening here on Long Island. We have the opportunity to seize this moment — to think boldly and go into the future together. And that's exactly what we're doing here in New York with the most ambitious energy and emissions reduction plans in the state. And Doreen, if you find another state that thinks they're getting better than us, you let me know and we'll up ours. Okay? I'm very competitive, very competitive. 70 percent of electricity from renewals by 2030 - 2030 is right around the corner, I can feel 2030 coming. It's not that far off anymore. 70 percent of electricity from renewables, 85 percent economy wide emission reductions by 2050. I spent my entire first year in office focused on these goals, and I'm focused on realizing that it is truly, the answer is with offshore wind.

I think about the Fleetwood Mac song - anybody hear of Fleetwood Mac here? Did they play Fleetwood Mac when you walked in? I hope they play it when you walk out. But the song says, "Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise." My friends, the wind is blowing in New York, and the sun is rising on our clean energy future, thanks to Sunrise Wind. That was good, wasn't it? Want me to say that again?

We are the epicenter of offshore wind. And I put $500 million of investment, not just for the programs themselves, but also for the supply chain. Because it's great to say we can do this, but if the component parts are coming from Germany and are being stuck on cargo ships that don't make it here, we're not where we need to be. I want it all built right here in New York. We have a legacy of building here in this state. We can do it here. Let's make it in New York. So, we're already creating opportunities. We have five offshore wind projects underway in the South Fork Wind Farm. We've been here for many of the milestones for that. And it is creating a whole ecosystem. And what I see is, such win-win, or wind-wind, opportunities with other parts of our state. To do this manufacturing up in Albany, the Port of Albany, making parts of wind turbines, shipping them down the Hudson River, reversing the trajectory of Henry Hudson in 1600s as he explored commerce in upstate.

Now we're bringing it down here to help build what we need to do to create the whole system, but also, and through that we'll have over 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind, enough to power over 6 million homes, 6 million homes that otherwise would be having to be powered by fossil fuel generated sources. But also the most exciting part for me is I talk about coming from Lackawanna in Buffalo. I know what it's like when jobs are roaring, and I also know what it feels like when they're all gone. They dissipate when an industry goes away overnight. So, when I'm able to say that this product will bring 10,000 good paying jobs to Long Island, that gets my attention as well. I'm very excited about that. So many of them are union jobs, good paying jobs, and that's on top of the 164,000 New Yorkers who are already working in clean energy. So we're just continuing to up the numbers.

So, the jobs and opportunities are there, but how do you make the connection? Okay, the jobs openings are here, the people are over here. How do you blend the two? I think we have some young people here. I don't know if you've thought about careers in offshore wind. Okay. You have? Okay. Are all your classmates talking about it too? Okay. That's okay. We're making progress. We're making progress here. So, I see the future before me. This is great. But there's a lot of people, you know, perhaps some person who had a job that's now displaced, you know, pandemic or other reasons, their company went away, downsized, young people, people in communities of color, they don't have role models in this industry. Lots of women, I go to job sites every single week. Sometimes it's tech, sometimes it's construction. I'm always saying, and where are the women? We could do better here. So that happens with an intentional effort. You don't just hope it happens. You put out goals, you reach out to communities that aren't used to being reached out to, and you also can say, we can make a difference. But let's lead them by the hand to the opportunities to get the training in the jobs where they can support themselves, raise a family, live a high quality of life that we have right here on Long Island.

So, here's what we do. We need the jobs. We need to do something important. So, today I'm taking a major step toward this, the culmination of a lot of hard work from people sitting in the front row, and I'm proud to have been joined by my partners and government, the private sector, to officially formalize the successful land transfer from New York to Suffolk County. You bring a national offshore wind training center to Long Island, a national offshore wind training center, right to Long Island, right here.

So, congratulations. Congratulations. You're going to make it happen. Stop talking about, Let's do it. Let's get the job done. And to Steve, our County Executive who worked tirelessly on this, saw a vision bringing together labor, academia, private sector.

This is how you make the magic happen. And I can feel it here. I can feel the energy, the clean energy that's going on in this with this kind of, you like that, like, oh, friends in the front row. I always do my own comedy routines. I do love Mrs. Maisel. That's another whole story. This is a $10 million investment, $10 million investing in our energy and our workforce funded by Ørsted and Eversource. Let's give them a round of applause once again. Thank you to our partners, thank you. Two of our most valued and collaborative partners, because we know New Yorkers have the best workforce in this country. That's one of the reasons I was able to land a company called Micron. Have you heard of it? 50,000 jobs. All I had to talk about was quality of life and the caliber of our workforce. I said, "No one works harder than New Yorkers." It's in our DNA. It's how we're hardwired. We work hard, we put in long hours, but we see the benefits for our families. That's the world I came from. That's the world I want to leave for our children as well, so we will continue to attract more developers when I can talk to them about the workforce that's sitting there trained - operative word trained - and ready to step in these jobs. So these are very specific skills. They're not any that I ever expect to have.

That's all right. Give somebody else the job. But we have training in height training, I would not like that either. Sea and fire survival, that sounds a little scary. I don't know if I'd want to have a course in that. Communication skills and global wind organization training, but there's opportunities for apprenticeships, professional certification, advanced degrees. There's no stopping us. I mean, there are so many levels of opportunity depending on how much time you want to invest, where you want to end up, where you want to take your career. And so all of this, and again, labor, you kept fighting to make this happen. And all of us are building this future together. Every single construction job will be paid a prevailing wage as they should be. And next year, we'll all be back for the ribbon cutting.

When we open next October, the training center will be housed in the future Brentwood Community Center. Finally get that one finished. Let's get that done. It'll be a one stop shop for training, development, and education in Brentwood. And Brentwood is an incredibly diverse, fascinating community. It truly is. It's America in one community, and I love it. And to be able to have this here where there's a school-to-jobs pipeline, where young people can see a path to get out of their circumstances and to lift themselves up. This was the vision behind this project. I think it's extraordinary. Once it's up and running this training center will collaborate closely with our state's Offshore Wind Training Institute and establish more collaboration and cross opportunities with workforce development.

So, our second announcement here today is this offshore wind training institute. We're now announcing $9 million in grants for offshore wind workforce development and training initiatives. Let's help others come to the table. That'll help vocational programs, high school community colleges, trade associations, unions - everybody who's part of this whole opportunity that's lying before us. Let's give them the money to get started because we cannot wait another day. Everything matters now. The steps we take today, the urgency that we bring to this means that we are going to get it done because we've waited too long. We've waited too long to capitalize on this opportunity to bring this incredibly clean source of energy to our homes, and I'm not waiting another second.

So, we're going to be able to do this. We're going to bring in more women, more minority partners, displaced union workers, people from underserved communities. They'll be the workforce of today and tomorrow with this program. So I'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to partnering. Are we back again for many, many, many, many more ribbon cuttings, but you made it happen. Everyone. Everyone involved in this. I want to give you from the bottom of my heart, a, a huge thank you because with this announcement, we're changing lives. We're changing lives today for the people who get this training, they get the skills, they can have a good paycheck, take care of their families, but ultimately, the lives of generations yet to be born because of the work we're doing to ensure a clean energy future that starts right here on Long Island.

So, thank you, everybody. And with that, let me bring up a great county executive who has made this happen. He would not give up, he just kept persevering. And that's the kind of caliber we have in our County Executive Steve Bellone. Thank you.