BOEM Completes First Region Environmental Review for Offshore Wind
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) completed its first regional environmental assessment as part of its continuing effort to accelerate the development of offshore wind energy power generation. The Final Programmatic Environmental Impact States for the New York Bight will be released later this week as a key step to move forward with the six large lease areas from the record February 2022 auction.
“We believe our regional approach will provide a solid baseline for future environmental reviews for any proposed offshore wind projects in the New York Bight,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. It is the next key step in the Biden-Harris administration's goal to have 30 GW offshore wind energy capacity by 2030. They note that the U.S. surpassed approval for 15 GW of offshore wind energy capacity earlier this year.
BOEM reports it received 1,568 unique comments from 560 submissions which informed this stage of the development project which was designed to set a structure for the environmental review of the six projects. The six wind lease areas in the NY Bight cover over 488,000 acres offshore New York and New Jersey with BOEM estimating it has a capacity to generate up to 7 GW of offshore wind energy, enough to power up to two million homes.
This stage of the review and approval process focused on preparing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to analyze potential environmental impacts of offshore wind activities in the six New York Bight lease areas. The Proposed Action for the PEIS identifies avoidance, minimization, mitigation, and monitoring (AMMM) measures that BOEM may require as conditions for approval for activities proposed by lessees in the individual construction and operations plans submitted for these six lease areas.
The Final PEIS analyzes 58 AMMM measures that have been applied previously to offshore wind activities and eight that have not been applied previously but may help reduce potential impacts. Additional environmental analyses specific to each proposed project would build on the PEIS.
The release of this step comes as the leading developers are lining up to submit proposals in New York State’s fifth solicitation. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) reported it received a total of 25 proposals from four developers including resubmissions after it canceled the bids in a prior round blaming GE Vernova’s decision not to produce a larger capacity offshore turbine.
Ørsted entered a new proposal into the mix calling for a third New York project that could deliver 1,458 MW which they said could power up to one million New York homes. Called Long Island Wind, they propose to start generating power in 2033. It would be in addition to South Fork Wind which was completed earlier this year and Sunrise Wind which is now under construction. Ørsted says together the three projects could satisfy approximately six percent of New York’s total electricity demand.
Community Wind, a joint venture between RWE and National Grid, also finalized its proposal to provide up to 2.8 GW which would come online between 2030 and 2032. It would be a two-phase project on its lease area in the New York Bight and would benefit from today’s BOEM announcement.
Excelsior Wind, proposed by Vineyard Offshore, and Attentive Energy One, proposed by the partnership between TotalEnergies, Rise Light & Power, and Corio Generation also resubmitted their proposed projects.
New York is scheduled to announce the winners from this round early in 2025.