The White House today announced an agreement to move forward with steps toward wind energy leasing in federal waters off California, with a goal of holding a lease sale in mid-2022.
The Interior Department has specifically identified a ~399 square mile area northwest of Morro Bay off California’s central coast and a separate area off the state’s northern coast that will be further evaluated as areas for potential future leasing. The announcement notes that both areas combined could generate up to 4.6 GW of wind energy and power up to 1.6 million homes, and “will enable the build out of a significant new domestic clean energy resource over the next decade or more.”
Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold an Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force meeting on Thursday, June 24 to discuss the identified areas, and Wind Energy Areas will subsequently be finalized and subject to environmental analysis.
National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said that “by taking a whole-of-government approach, the U.S. can smartly develop our nation’s world-class offshore wind energy resources, deploy new technologies that our government has helped to advance, and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs – all in the service of combating the climate crisis,” with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland saying in part that “I believe that a clean energy future is within our grasp in the United States, but it will take all of us and the best-available science to make it happen.”
