Last November, Congress passed the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as part of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better framework. The Act will provide Massachusetts with more than $9 billion in federal investment — with more money available through grant programs — dedicated to improving infrastructure in the state.
David Cash, regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) New England Regional Office, joined Boston Public Radio on Friday to share what the Biden administration has in store for New England’s clean energy industry.
Cash says that funding tied to the Act will be targeted to the “places where we can get big emissions reductions and big job growth” in an attempt to hit Biden’s national goal of deploying 30 gigawatts — or 30,000 megawatts — of offshore wind by 2030.
“We're talking tens of thousands of jobs,” Cash said. “We're talking radical emissions reductions.”
One of the key focuses of the Biden administration’s offshore wind projects, Cash says, is assisting “communities who have been overburdened and vulnerable for decades” both environmentally and economically.
“If we think about where these offshore wind projects are going to be launched from, it's the New Bedfords, it's the Salems, it's the Bridgeports,” Cash said. “It's the New Londons. It's the Portsmouth, New Hampshires.
“Those are all kinds of jobs that we should be focusing on workforce development and trainings,” he continued, “so that people in those communities who did not benefit from the IT boom, or the pharma boom, or the biotech boom, can benefit from the cleantech boom.”
