FEATURE
OFFSHORE WIND
POWER SURGE With Vineyard Wind on approval track, 10 more reviews in the wings By Kirk Moore
building wave for offshore wind energy surged out of the Biden administration, with March 29 announcements that set a goal of building 30,000 megawatts of capacity and opening up to 800,000 more acres for leasing in the New York Bight. Two weeks later, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moderated the plan, withdrawing potential leasing areas off New York — acknowledging conflicts with commercial fishing, maritime traffic and tourism that will be rife in the East Coast’s most crowded waters. But on a broad scale, it appears to be full speed ahead for BOEM. Even during the Trump administration’s fitful approach to offshore wind, the agency itself worked consistently to make leasing possible for wind power developers. Today there are 17 active leases, comprising 1.7 million acres, says BOEM Director Amanda Lefton. Ten more environmental reviews could be started this year, and construction and operation plans for 16 projects could be in place by 2025, Lefton said during an April 14 online meeting of BOEM’s New York Bight task force. Now an “all of government approach” is being brought to bear, and the “New York Bight will play a central role” in reaching the administration’s 30,000-MW goal, said Lefton. BOEM has “a steadfast commitment to do
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this right” by fishermen and other stakeholders, and the New York Bight is a place where collaboration is working, she said. But one prominent group not in virtual attendance that day was the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups and communities. The group has been meeting for years with BOEM planners and wind developers, but in recent weeks reacted with alarm to the Biden administration’s full-court press to expand the industry. “Fishermen have shown up for years to ‘engage’ in processes where spatial constraints and, often, the actors themselves are opposed to their livelihood,” according to a letter RODA submitted to the task force, stating it would boycott the meetings in protest. “This time and effort has resulted in effectively no accommodations to mitigate impacts from individual developers or the supposedly unbiased federal and state governments,” the letter says. “Individuals from the fishing community care deeply, but the deck is so stacked that they are exhausted and even traumatized by this relentless assault on their worth and expertise.” (Read the letter in our Mail Buoy section on page 4.) The Interior Department formally reversed a Trump-era legal opinion on offshore wind energy, with an April 9 memo by Robert Anderson, the department’s principle deputy solicitor. That opinion critiqued and reversed findings written www.nationalfisherman.com
