Mighty seas may be whipping all around it, but offshore wind just keeps on spinning.
While the specter of a second Donald Trump presidency, looming taller than any turbine, casts a foreboding shadow over an already nascent industry beleaguered by inflation, supply chain uncertainty, and unforeseen mishappenings of all ilks, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is business as usual in the final days of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Maryland Offshore Wind moving ahead
Today BOEM announced its approval of the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for the Maryland Offshore Wind project, the final necessary seal of approval needed following the Department of the Interior’s Record of Decision in September.
The United States’ tenth offshore wind project is situated about 8.7 nautical miles off of Maryland and approximately 9 nautical miles from Sussex County, Delaware. If built to its intended capacity, Maryland Offshore Wind will be capable of generating more than 2 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy for the Delmarva Peninsula, powering more than 718,000 homes and supporting almost 2,680 jobs annually over seven years, according to BOEM director Elizabeth Klein.
The approved COP includes a multiple-phase construction approach and the operation of up to 114 wind turbine generators, up to four offshore substation platforms, one meteorological tower, and up to four offshore export cable corridors. Two phases, known as MarWin and Momentum Wind, have already secured offshore renewable energy certificates from the State of Maryland.
BOEM says it integrated meaningful feedback from Tribal Nations, government agencies, ocean users, and other interested parties before reaching its decision, resulting in required measures to avoid, minimize, or mitigate any potential impacts from the project on marine life and other important ocean uses, such as fishing.
The Maryland Offshore Wind Project is the culmination of more than a decade of effort to add offshore wind generation to the state’s energy mix, as explored in more detail here.
Doing right in the Bight
On Monday, BOEM issued a Record of Decision identifying more than 50 environmental measures expected to be applied to future wind energy development of the six lease areas offshore New York and New Jersey in an area known as the New York Bight, which garnered a record-breaking $4.37 billion in bids at the Biden administration’s first offshore wind lease auction.
BOEM estimates that full development of the six lease areas, covering more than 488,000 acres of ocean, could generate up to 7 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy, enough to power up to two million homes. That would go a long way towards meeting the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of having 30 GW of operational capacity by 2030, although it appears the United States is not on pace to eclipse that total until closer to 2033, notwithstanding any gunking up of the pipework by Trump 2.0.
In the Record of Decision, BOEM identifies 58 previously applied avoidance, minimization, mitigation, and monitoring (AMMM) measures BOEM plans to apply across the Bight areas. To reduce potential environmental impacts, BOEM suggests developers consider these measures in the Construction and Operations Plans they submit for subsequent review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Project-specific environmental reviews may include revised, additional, or different AMMM measures, if needed, to further reduce potential impacts. Monday’s decision follows BOEM’s announcement of the New York Bight Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on October 21. The “Notice of Availability of a Record of Decision for Expected Wind Energy Development in the New York Bight” will be published in the Federal Register on December 6.
All six lease areas in the New York Bight are still considered active by BOEM, however, TotalEnergies chief executive officer Patrick Pouyanne told attendees of the Energy Intelligence Forum in London last week that his company’s up-to-3-GW project is “on pause,” as reported by Bloomberg. The decision is believed to have at least something to do with incoming President Trump’s eternal disdain for the industry, which he has often publicly disparaged (and many times falsely).
“I said to my team, the project in New York, we’ll see that in four years,” TotalEnergies’ Pouyanne added. “But the advantage is it’s only for four years.”
During the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of the Interior approved more than 15 GW offshore wind capacity from ten projects, enough to power nearly 5.25 million homes. It also held six offshore wind lease auctions, including the record-breaking Bight sale and the first-ever sales in the Gulf of Maine and offshore the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. BOEM also postponed or canceled a pair of planned auctions, citing “insufficient interest.”
