Wind Energy – New York Bight
The Trump administration’s drive to derail offshore wind development claimed another victim last Tuesday when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management cancelled virtual public meetings on an environmental impact study for the New York Bight project.
In the last week of the outgoing Biden administration, BOEM published a Notice of Intent in the Federal Register that it would prepare an environmental impact statement for a construction and operations plan submitted by Vineyard Mid-Atlantic LLC, affiliated with developers of the Vineyard Wind project off southern New England.
“The Department of the Interior and BOEM are implementing President Trump’s memorandum temporarily halting offshore wind leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf,” according to an email BOEM sent out to stakeholders at 5:25 p.m. Eastern time. “The memorandum also pauses new or renewed approvals, rights-of-way, permits, leases, or loans for offshore wind projects pending a review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.”
The proposed array of 117 turbines generating up to 2,000 megawatts would be on a 43,056-acre lease. The lease is one of six in the New York Bight lease area that BOEM awarded Feb. 23, 2022, in a record-setting lease sale that fetched about $4.37 billion.
The Vineyard Mid-Atlantic tract borders Equinor’s 80,000-acre Empire Wind lease, acquired in 2017 and one of the earliest ventures in Northeast U.S. waters. The New York Bight lease auction expanded future areas for development farther offshore, and at the time was seen as a signal of the industry’s impending success under the Biden administration.
Now the Vineyard Mid-Atlantic cancellation is another hit on offshore wind developers, U.S. suppliers and political support for the industry, particularly in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states that looked to wind power to supplant aging onshore power plants and growing energy demands.
New Jersey utility regulators announced February 3 the cancellation of a planned bidding round for offshore wind developments, after Shell backed out of its joint venture commitment with EDF for the planned Atlantic Shores wind array off Long Beach Island and Brigantine, and Prysmian cancelled a 200 million dollars investment in a cable factory in Massachusetts.
