The Interior Department announced new regulations Thursday designed to speed up development of offshore wind projects, an energy source the Biden administration is banking on to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The proposed rule from Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management seeking to “modernize” its regulations comes alongside ongoing conversations in Washington about how to streamline the review and permitting of large-scale energy projects, something President Joe Biden urged Congress to prioritize as recently as December.
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BOEM is using existing regulatory authority to that end, proposing to make it easier to do things like deploy meteorological buoys, which are used to gather weather data to determine whether an area is viable for development. BOEM’s proposal would also defer some of the survey data requirements that lessees and grant holders are required to submit when making a construction and operations plan later in the process.
It would also establish a “Renewable Energy Leasing Schedule,” mirroring the existing five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program, which is required by statute and lays out each potential lease sale for a five-year period. The proposed renewable leasing schedule would similarly provide the anticipated lease sales intended for the subsequent five years.
The proposed regulations would provide more certainty to developers, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
“America’s clean energy transition is happening right here and now. Offshore wind will power our communities, advance our environmental justice goals and stimulate our economy by creating thousands of good-paying union jobs across the nation,” Haaland said.
The Biden administration wants to stand up 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and has been making progress, having held three wind lease sales in 2022.
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Among those was the first ever Pacific lease sale off the coast of California, which will be developed using floating wind turbines.
