November 24, 2020 — Few industries stand to benefit more from the Biden administration’s arrival than clean energy, and the nascent offshore wind sector in New England could get a long-awaited boost as a result.
So far, construction has yet to start on any major offshore wind farm in the United States, as projects before the Trump administration were mired in permitting delays. Now, with a sympathetic ally in the White House, the floodgates could be poised to open.
President-elect Joe Biden has set aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gases, by, for example, rejoining the Paris climate accord, which Trump abandoned, and pushing the electric-power sector to be carbon-free by 2035. Those goals will be tough to pull off without offshore wind.
Industry executives hope a Biden-controlled Department of the Interior will ease the permitting bottleneck. Equally important: restarting auctions for offshore zones that have apparently been on hold under the current Interior secretary, David Bernhardt.
And the person Biden appoints as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is more likely to approve clean-energy friendly policies. Another important change: Biden is expected to put more faith in the career bureaucrats at Interior and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, as well as the Department of Commerce, which should bring needed stability and consistency to agency reviews.
The offshore wind industry, funded in large part by European conglomerates, had been off to a strong start at the outset of President Trump’s term, despite his public disdain for wind turbines. Prior Interior secretary Ryan Zinke was seen as warm to wind power, sometimes even a vocal champion. But the mood chilledconsiderably after Trump replaced him with Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist.
Most notably, Bernhardt put the Vineyard Wind project on hold in mid-2019, just as it was about to get its final federal permit. The project was slated to be the first major offshore wind farm in the United States, with the potential to power more than 400,000 homes. Just 10 days ago, Vineyard Wind was hit with yet another permit delay. (The likely final approval date has been pushed to mid-January.)
And there hasn’t been an auction for offshore wind leases since December 2018, despite the surprisingly strong interest in the last auction.
Bernhardt ostensibly put Vineyard Wind on hold to undertake a broader review of the cumulative impact of various wind proposals along the East Coast. But the move sent shudders through the nascent industry, as the line behind Vineyard Wind started to grow.
Annie Hawkins, executive director of the fishing industry-backed Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, wants more emphasis on that balance. She notes the analysis commissioned by Bernhardt has the potential to benefit the wind industry in the long run, by mitigating future legal risks.
“There are really a lot of steps that were skipped that we need to go back and get right, to make sure we are balancing both uses,” Hawkins said. “We’d be doing a lot better if we were doing this all together from day one.”
The wind industry won’t need to appease just fishermen under a Biden administration. Alicia Barton, who until recently led New York’s clean-energy efforts, said Biden has made it clear that union labor, equity, and environmental justice should also be strong points of consideration.
Still, Barton remains optimistic these challenges can be overcome: Biden’s 2035 goal for a carbon-free power sector is five years earlier than New York’s, one of the most aggressive states in this regard.
“It’s inarguably ambitious,” said Barton, who now runs FirstLight Power, a Burlington operator of hydroelectric, solar, and energy-storage plants. “Offshore wind looms large as one of the biggest levers they can pull to make progress on their 2035 clean-electricity goal.”