Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON
EnergiesNet.com 07 21 2022
President Joe Biden is set to announce plans to encourage offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico and in Atlantic waters near the Southeast US, part of a bid to prove he’s confronting the climate crisis despite a congressional logjam on the issue.
The moves are part of the measures set to be unveiled Wednesday as the White House tries to reinvigorate its environmental agenda after Senator Joe Manchin last week withdrew his support for climate change and tax legislation.
Biden will discuss the steps during a speech at the site of a shuttered coal plant in Massachusetts that’s now primed to serve as a manufacturing hub for undersea power cables needed to bring offshore wind power to shore. The policy announcements were described by people familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because details aren’t public.
The president will announce the next steps toward the formation of offshore wind energy areas in the Gulf of Mexico, with the Interior Department identifying potential territory to host wind turbines in the basin that has for decades been a prime source of US oil and gas. Biden has laid out a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, with auctions of territory near California expected later this year, and, ultimately, lease sales on almost every US coast.
The president also will direct Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to advance wind development in waters off the Southeast U.S., including Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Former President Donald Trump had withdrawn those areas from offshore energy leasing — effectively ruling out new oil and wind projects in the region — after an outcry from coastal residents concerned about potential drilling off their shores.
For now, Biden is stopping short of issuing an order that would attempt to reverse that Trump leasing moratorium, two of the people said. There are legal questions about a president’s ability to reverse a leasing withdrawal, but the House last week passed a measure that would restore the federal government’s power to sell offshore wind leases in the region.
White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy told CNN on Wednesday the president’s announcements are helping “to actually move forward with offshore wind that — in this country — is booming.”
Biden is “going to make it clear that just because Congress couldn’t get it done, he is going to move forward with every power available to him to make the change and the shift to clean energy,” she said.
McCarthy said Biden would roll out a series of climate actions over the coming weeks.
bloomberg.com 07 20 2022
