By Matthew Daly, Associated Press, October 13, 2021
“Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department hopes to hold lease sales by 2025 off the coasts of [several states, including California]. The [seven major offshore wind farms to be developed on these leased sites] are part of Biden’s plan to address global warming and could avoid about 78 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, while creating up to 77,000 jobs, officials said.
“[Separately, the Department of Energy] will spend $2 million on visual surveys and acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and seabirds at potential wind sites on the West Coast.
Read the full story on the newly announced site leasing program here. (~3 min.)
Previously, on May 25, 2021, the Biden Administration announced opening two sites on the northern and central coasts of California to “its first commercial scale offshore clean energy projects.”
From the Biden Administration’s announcement: “[T]he Department of the Interior, in coordination with the Department of Defense, has identified an area (‘the Morro Bay 399 Area’) that will support three gigawatts of offshore wind on roughly 399 square miles off California’s central coast region, northwest of Morro Bay. The Department of the Interior is also advancing the Humboldt Call Area as a potential Wind Energy Area, located off northern California.”
Previously in Roundup: AB 525 was proposed in February, setting an ambitious target for California’s offshore wind energy. The bill was signed into law on September 23, 2021, paving the way for coordination between state and federal agencies and the energy industry.