The offshore wind industry may be on edge with Donald Trump’s election, and his campaign promise to kill their projects. But the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy presses on.
BOEM officials announced Wednesday the start of a 90-day public comment period on the agency’s “regional environmental analysis of potential mitigation measures on future development activities for five offshore wind lease areas off California’s central and north coasts. “
A notice of the California Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) will publish in the Federal Register on Nov. 14, starting the comment period. Leases totaling over 373,268 acres have potential to produce over 4.6 GW of offshore wind energy, enough to power over 1.5 million homes, according to the agency.
“Public input on our analysis will guide mitigation of future offshore wind energy development across multiple leases offshore California,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein in announcing the PEIS. “We believe that this comprehensive regional approach will foster efficiencies for future project-specific wind energy project environmental reviews, all while ensuring the protection of our ocean environment and marine life.”
A December 2022 auction by BOEM brought in over $757 million in winning bids from wind power companies for five lease areas offshore California.
They were the first deepwater lease areas in the U.S. that would require floating wind turbines to be developed. While wind power proposals have strong political support from California state government, there is strong pushback from other coastal interest groups including commercial fishermen and tourism businesses. Similar resistance in Oregon has stalled BOEM’s progress toward lease sales there.
The California mitigation study is the second regional analysis BOEM has conducted of offshore renewable energy development over multiple lease areas, following on a regional study of the western Gulf of Mexico wind energy areas.
“BOEM decided to take this additional step to complete a PEIS because of the relatively close proximity of the five lease areas and the timing of when BOEM expects to receive future project plans for review,” according to an agency statement.
“This new regional approach is an evolution of BOEM’s process to help ensure timely decisions that advance offshore wind energy development while safeguarding the ocean environment and marine life and reducing conflicts with other ocean uses.”
