The US has announced plans for offshore wind off the northern and central coasts of California to generate 4.6 GW of clean energy to the grid.
The US has announced plans for offshore wind off the northern and central coasts of California to generate 4.6 GW of clean energy to the grid.
The Department of the Interior, in cooperation with the Department of Defense and the State of California, has identified an area (the Morro Bay 399 Area) that will support 3 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 located off northern California. A lease sale auction is expected to take place in mid-2022.
While advancing wind power, the Department of the Interior dealt a blow to oil and gas by suspending the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Programme in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending completion of a comprehensive analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Under the previous administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) held a lease sale on 6 January, 2021, and subsequently issued 10-year leases on nine tracts covering more than 430,000 acres.
The department has now identified a lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives in the EIS conducted under NEPA.
