Selling offshore wind leases off the coast of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia will have “no significant impacts” on the environment, according to a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management environmental review released Thursday.
The analysis comes ahead of BOEM’s plan to hold a wind lease auction in the central Atlantic Ocean later this year, across an area that could support enough wind energy to power 2.2 million homes.
“BOEM is proud to continue to support the clean energy transition in a responsible manner in the Central Atlantic region,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with Tribes, our other government partners, ocean users, and the public to ensure that any development in the region is done in a way that avoids, reduces, or mitigates potential impacts to ocean users and the marine environment.”
The central Atlantic wind sale is among 12 that the Biden administration has recently said will be held in U.S. waters over the next five years, an ambitious ramp up of offshore wind leases to support decarbonization in the U.S. The White House has committed to approving enough ocean wind power to support 10 million homes by the end of the decade.
