Federal Government Prepares More Offshore Wind Lease Areas

By Christian Roselund

In late October and November 2022 the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced steps forward on new offshore wind lease areas in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. On 31 October 2022 BOEM announced that it had finalized two wind energy areas in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana and Texas, as the first step towards a 2023 lease sale. And on 16 November 2022 BOEM announced eight new draft wind energy areas in the Central Atlantic.

This will be BOEM’s first offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. The total area of the two lease sales in waters near Galveston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana are 2,762 square kilometers. The next step in the process for this lease sale is for BOEM to issue a proposed sale notice for public comment, which it plans to do later this year or in early 2023.

The eight draft offshore wind lease areas in the Central Atlantic are at an earlier stage but cover a much larger area of roughly 6,900 square kilometers off the shores of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. These eight areas are a subset of a 16,000 square kilometer call area that BOEM announced for public comment in April 2022, and the agency notes that these areas may be further modified after it incorporates feedback from other agencies in the federal government, ocean users, and other stakeholders. BOEM’s announcement kicks off a 30-day public comment period, during which the agency will hold virtual meetings that are open to the public.

BOEM has held 10 offshore wind lease sales to date and issued 27 offshore wind leases, all on the U.S. East Coast. On 6 December 2022 it will hold its first offshore wind lease sale on the West Coast.

The Biden Administration has also approved the nation’s first two large-scale offshore wind farms and construction has begun on the 130-megawatt South Fork Wind and the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind projects. Both of these projects are located in Long Island Sound and both are expected to be operational by the end of 2023. Vineyard Wind may be the first of the two. On 1 November 2022 the project began laying the undersea cable to connect the wind farm to the mainland.

Source: Gulf of Mexico Activities (BOEM)

Source: BOEM Identifies Draft Wind Energy Areas in the Central Atlantic for Public Review and Comment (BOEM)