About this conversation

Join us with Daniel Chu, Ashley Dawson, Mike Menser, Bridget Moynihan, and Desen Özkan to discuss the challenges facing offshore wind energy and the urgent need for a transition to sustainable energy sources. A bevy of contracts for offshore wind farms in states from New York and New Jersey to Massachusetts have recently been cancelled. Plans for decarbonizing the grid are consequently in crisis. Why have so many wind farm contracts been cancelled and how do these cancellations reflect broader problems in the wind industry? Why is the wind industry so important to energy transition plans in the US and beyond? How have elected officials reacted to this crisis in offshore wind? What else could be done to speed up the buildout of offshore wind and the democratic and just energy transition of which it is a part?

This event will feature members of the NYC Climate Justice Hub and the Public Power Observatory in conversation about the crisis in offshore wind. The conversation focuses on a new report, Why We Need Public Wind Power, written by members of the Public Power Observatory. Free and open to all, this event takes place in Room 9205 at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Click here to REGISTER and attend.

Participants' Bios:

Daniel Chu is the Energy Planner for the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and a PhD student in the Earth and Environmental Science Program at the CUNY GC. He is a geographer and urban designer with an interest in democratic built environment planning for environmental justice communities.

Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island. He is the co-founder of the Public Power Observatory and an activist with the Public Power NY campaign. He is the author of Environmentalism from Below (Haymarket Books, 2023) and People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R Books, 2020), among others.

Mike Menser (Associate Professor, Philosophy) is the Director of the Urban Sustainability Program at Brooklyn College, the Associate Director of Public Engagement for the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay (SRIJB) and the co-director of the NYC Climate Justice Hub. He is the author of We Decide! and co-author of of Democratizing Democratizing Public Services.

Bridget Moynihan is a PhD student at Tufts University. Bridget has a background in civil engineering and now studies offshore wind energy at Tufts. She works on monitoring and extending the lifetimes of offshore wind turbines, port and supply chain needs, and renewable energy policy. She's currently studying how different policy choices may affect the long-term offshore wind buildout, including how public ownership in offshore wind can advance renewable energy while prioritizing justice and equity in our energy systems.

Desen Özkan is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on sociotechnical engineering education and contextual energy education for a just energy transition. Before UConn, Desen was a postdoctoral researcher at Tufts University where she worked with the Offshore Wind Research Group in the OSW graduate program on several interdisciplinary research projects—the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of different foundation types and worker safety as a sociotechnical engineering design problem. She is a founding faculty member of UConn’s Engineering Education Ph.D. program and currently teaches in the Engineering and Human Rights Initiative.

This event is co-sponsored by the Public Power Observatory and the NYC Climate Justice Hub.