The US Interior Department (DOI) could begin issuing leases later this year for commercial wind energy development in Atlantic Ocean tracts off Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia, a senior official tells Congress.
"We are pushing ahead quite aggressively," Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), said in testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee. BOEMRE, an agency of DOI, oversees energy exploration and development in federal waters on the Outer Continental Shelf.
BOEMRE will seek public comment for about a month on a recently released preliminary environmental assessment of its plan to lease so-called Wind Energy Areas off the coasts of those four states. Bromwich told lawmakers that after an initial review of data from those areas his agency believes that wind energy development there would have no "significant impact on the environment."
The agency could change its preliminary conclusion in response to input from stakeholders. The document is part of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's "Smart from the Start" initiative unveiled last year that aims to help private developers identify offshore areas best suited for harvesting wind energy, while also streamlining the permitting process.
Bromwich was careful to note that any issuance of leases does not eliminate the need for a "thorough environmental analysis" of each proposed commercial project, or authorize construction or operations. He says BOEMRE will continue to work with task forces set up by the agency with various east coast states to advance renewable energy development in a careful, responsible way.
The areas proposed by BOEMRE include 1,432sq km facing New Jersey, 561.6sq km off Virginia and 416.8sq km off Delaware , with the last two slightly modified to take into account stakeholder comments made to the agency. In contrast, the initial tract proposed off Maryland last November was cut in size by more than half from 704.5sq km to between 321.4-328.2sq km, in part from state concerns that it would overlap with Delaware Bay shipping lanes.
Avoiding potential user conflicts up-front "makes prospects for offshore wind development more likely for Maryland," says Ian Hines, spokesman for the Maryland Energy Administration (MEA), a state agency whose brief includes curbing reliance on energy imports and improving the environment. He tells Recharge that the modified area shows that the federal government is listening to counsel by Maryland officials on sea-based wind energy development.
Hines says that offshore wind power supporters should not feel disappointed with BOEMRE's decision as there is still plenty of area available to support an eventual 1GW in development envisioned by Governor Martin O'Malley's administration.
O'Malley intends to reintroduce a bill in the 2012 legislative session that would provide state subsidies for an eventual $1.5bn wind farm off Maryland, after lawmakers this year shelved it to study the issue further. It would have required electric utilities to enter into 25-year deals to buy between 400MW and 600MW of power at above-market prices.
