ABINGDON, Va. (WJHL) — Dozens of manufacturing businesses scattered around Southwest Virginia could make a strong play to capture contracts and revenue from the burgeoning offshore wind industry, higher education and economic development leaders say.
With that in mind, four Southwest Virginia community colleges signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday and will collaborate on training and development in the industry’s manufacturing supply chain.
Mountain Empire, Southwest Virginia, Virginia Highlands and Wytheville community colleges will work together to promote, develop and expand worker preparation for regional supply chain manufacturers in the sector.
Adam Hutchison, the president of Virginia Highlands who saw the growth of onshore wind energy when he worked in Texas, is bullish on the effort’s prospects for driving growth in a region that’s been beset by population decline and loss of opportunity.
I’m confident that we can go to worldwide manufacturers and say, ‘You don’t have to buy this part overseas and ship it to the Chesapeake Bay area or to the Eastern Shore to manage your offshore wind turbine industry,'” Hutchison said.
“‘You can buy these materials parts locally in the Commonwealth and have them there faster, with less shipping expense, with less overhead and manage that logistics supply chain much more easily.”
Pursuing the sector was one recommendation of a consultant, Xodus Group, that researched areas of economic potential for Invest SWVA, a regional economic development group. Invest SWVA announced in late 2021 its “Project Veer” aimed at the offshore wind energy (OSW) market.
The educational collaboration is one of five recommendations from Xodus’s final report. Top of the list is identifying a major company to act as an anchor and an exemplar of the region, helping pave the way to relationships with global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
Hutchison said he’s fairly confident an “exemplar” can be found along with other companies to follow. The region has been rich with businesses that provide support for the coal industry and those needs have dwindled significantly over the past decade-plus.
“It takes a lot of parts and pieces to keep those turbines moving,” Hutchison said. “It’s more than just an initial build or the individuals that climb those turbines and maintain them. There’s something like 8,000 parts that have to be made somewhere and I think Southwest Virginia is a great place to build that piece of the industry.”
He saw the industry grow exponentially in Texas and expects something similar on the coast, where so far “the United States has been a little more deliberate about putting turbines.”
Hutchison said the businesses he’s spoken with seem “cautiously optimistic” about taking a chance on retooling for the sector. If they take the plunge, the colleges are ready.
“We’re already teaching CNC and precision manufacturing and mechatronics and industrial/electrical, so that capacity already exists. It’s really just a matter of maybe a slight modification in some of those learning outcomes or a specific application.”
As opportunities have dwindled in the region, whose population decreased by nearly double digits in the 2010-2020 period, many young people have left. Hutchison recalled speaking to a high school student recently.
“He said as he looked at his middle-class parents, ‘I want what they have, but I don’t know how to get from there to here. So there is a challenge for us to attract the kinds of jobs that pay well but also provide the quality of life that I think our younger generations are looking for.”
If the OSW industry becomes part of accomplishing that, Hutchison said it would be poetic justice.
“I don’t want to be too romanticized about it, but this region, which powered the whole country with coal for all those years can be a part of this sort of renaissance of energy production in a new way by manufacturing the resources necessary for offshore wind to be a big part of our grid.”
