The Trump administration is offering access to hundreds of thousands of acres for the offshore wind industry, in the hopes of boosting a renewable energy source that has struggled to gain traction in the U.S. to keep pace with Europe.
The Interior Department on Friday proposed a lease sale for 390,000 acres for commercial wind energy projects in two areas offshore the coast of Massachusetts. The department will start a public comment period for the proposal starting April 11.
The offer continues a series of offshore wind auctions that began in the Obama administration. Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Management has previously awarded 13 commercial offshore wind leases in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast, from Massachusetts to North Carolina.
The lease offer comes after the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this week requested input on which parts of the Atlantic Ocean offer strong opportunity for leasing by offshore developers.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, claiming offshore wind as part of the Trump administration’s “all of the above” and “energy dominance” mantras, delivered a speech Friday at the International Offshore Wind Partnering Forum.
“We have an emerging industry; this is an opportunity to move forward on a portfolio of all-of-the-above energy as well as develop infrastructure for a long-term industry,” Zinke said.
The wind industry is cheering the Interior Department’s move, even as it has criticized the Trump administration for other policy actions favoring fossil fuels, like trying to boost uneconomic coal and nuclear plants with subsidies.
“Secretary Zinke’s leadership is transforming the enormous potential for offshore wind into a concrete pillar of American energy dominance,” Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, said Friday. “Expanding the market for offshore wind is good news for American workers and the coastal communities needed to manufacture, deploy and operate these projects. Working closely with the states, this administration can lead the U.S. to become a world leader for offshore wind as it is for other sources of energy.”
ZInke, emphasizing the administration’s prioritizing of offshore wind, told reporters Friday that the East Coast may be excluded from his controversial draft plan to open nearly all federal waters for offshore oil and natural gas drilling.
In comments at the offshore wind energy conference, Zinke, according to Politico, acknowledged recent results from two massive offshore oil and gas lease auctions in the Gulf of Mexico were “modest at best.”
He said companies are favoring places near existing infrastructure, which are relatively sparse on the East Coast.
“In the current energy portfolio, wind has the greatest opportunity to grow,” Zinke told reporters.
Offshore wind is showing promise, after years of struggling with high costs.
The Atlantic possesses the nation’s first, and only, offshore wind project, the Block Island wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.
Late last year, the company behind a planned offshore wind farm off Cape Cod in Massachusetts gave up on the nearly two-decade fight to bring it to life, stymied by litigation, financial problems, and political opposition from waterfront homeowners, fishermen, and more.
But more projects are coming.
Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas company, is planning a wind farm off the coast of New York. Oregon-based Avangrid Renewables, is planning a project off North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Moody’s, the credit rating company, released a report this week predicting major growth in U.S. offshore wind development in the coming years. It notes that there are more than 13 gigawatts of offshore wind currently under development in the U.S. as the industry is boosted by declining costs and a friendly regulatory environment.
“Europe and Asia have been leading the way in developing the 32 gigawatts of offshore wind estimated to come online by 2020,” said Lesley Ritter, an assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s. “But the U.S. is poised to become a more material player in the industry as well.”
