Wind Power

Gulf of Mexico offshore wind advances with BOEM environmental finding
Gulf of Mexico offshore wind advances with BOEM environmental finding
(Photo Credit: steve docwra/Bigstock.com)

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued an environmental “finding of no significant impact” that brings development of offshore wind energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico one step closer to reality.

BOEM prepared an environmental assessment of the potential effects of issuing up to 18 commercial and research wind leases as well as potential easements and rights-of-use and easement associated with each lease and grants for subsea cable corridors and associated offshore collector/converter platforms. 

The easements would be located on the Outer Continental Shelf areas of the Gulf of Mexico, extending from what the BOEM’s lease Call Area to state waters and to the onshore energy grid.

The BOEM environmental report declared off limits areas located within the boundaries of any unit of the National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, National Marine Sanctuary System, or National Monument. It also excluded a handful of blocks that included unique topographic features.

In February, the Department of the Interior proposed what it said would be the first-ever offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The Proposed Sale Notice included a 102,480-acre area offshore Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two areas offshore Galveston, Texas, one comprising 102,480 acres and the other comprising 96,786 acres. 

The action was part of a 2021 strategy to meet a Biden administration goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.

Since 2021, the Department has held three offshore wind lease auctions – including a sale offshore New York and the first-ever sale offshore the Pacific Coast in California—initiated environmental reviews of 10 offshore wind projects, and advanced the process to explore additional Wind Energy Areas in Oregon, Gulf of Maine and Central Atlantic.

The Department of Energy has said that two-thirds of U.S. offshore wind resource are located in deep-water areas that require floating platforms. It set a goal of reducing the cost of floating offshore wind energy by more than 70% by 2035.