The impact of offshore wind in meeting coastal and inland load growth in PJM

White Paper

PJM, the largest power grid in North America, is heading toward a 7.8 GW capacity shortfall by 2033. Electricity demand is growing five times faster than its historical rate, driven by AI data centers, semiconductor fabs, and industrial electrification, while new supply is barely keeping pace — less than 20 MW of new natural gas came online in 2024-25 while 1,700 MW retired. The grid’s riskiest hours have shifted to winter nights, when solar and storage contribute least. Left unaddressed, the shortfall carries an estimated $6.2 billion annual reliability cost and puts at risk investments like Intel’s Ohio semiconductor facility ($2.8B annually to the state economy) and Virginia’s data center industry ($1.8B per GW of capacity) that depend on reliable, affordable power.

Offshore wind is well-positioned to help close the gap. Its generation peaks during winter months and evening hours, exactly when PJM is most stressed and when competing technologies fall short. A single project the size of Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind contributes roughly 950 MW of accredited capacity — equivalent to a small nuclear plant — and tripling current offshore wind deployment could cut outage risk in the most constrained part of the grid by 46%. The benefits aren’t coastal-only: removing offshore wind from the portfolio would raise outage risk in Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky by 32%, because PJM distributes capacity credits across all zones. No single energy source solves the problem alone, but as part of a balanced portfolio, utility-scale offshore wind is a meaningful tool for sustaining the reliability and economic growth of one of the most critical power systems in the country.