April 25, 2024 — The Biden administration is moving forward aggressively to expand the U.S. offshore wind energy industry including mapping out a five-year plan for up to a dozen new leases and streamlining and modernizing the rules for development. All of this comes as the industry however continues to struggle to get projects from concept to reality with New York suffering the latest setback in moving forward with approved projects.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the new five-year offshore wind leasing schedule which anticipates auctions in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, and the waters offshore of the U.S. territories in the next five years. The leasing schedule includes four potential offshore lease sales in 2024 (Central Atlantic, Gulf of Maine, Gulf of Mexico, and Oregon). It will be followed by one each in 2025 (Gulf of Mexico) and 2026 (Central Atlantic), two in 2027 (Gulf of Mexico and New York Bight), and four in 2028 (California, a U.S. Territory, Gulf of Maine, and Hawaii).
The new schedule is a follow-on to a 2021 timeline that called for seven lease sales by 2025. The previous plan included a commitment to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and a target goal of permitting at least 25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy by 2025. Currently, the U.S. has just over 240 MW installed offshore, which is up from 42 MW last year.