FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date Published: December 8, 2022
Washington, D.C. Thursday, December 8, 2022 — Yesterday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) completed five lease sales within two areas encompassing 582 square miles (373,268 acres) off the California coast, an area half the size of Yosemite National Park. In total, the auction generated $757M (or 17% of the total raised by BOEM during the February 2022 auction for the New York Bight – $4.37B). The current process for leasing and permitting offshore wind development projects remains rushed and fails to properly consider and protect existing ocean users and resources. Regarding the California leases, siting decisions were made without a robust public process and without consideration of the impacts to users and the areas themselves.
The lease sites, when developed, will be populated by floating offshore wind energy facilities. At present, there are no large-scale floating offshore facilities anywhere in the world and significant uncertainties remain over the technology that will be installed, much of which has not yet been designed. This may explain the lack of interest and underwhelming price tag for the California leases.
Little has been done to resolve the significant scientific, environmental, and economic uncertainties of offshore wind development, despite the fishing industry reasonably requesting such action for over a decade. We have repeatedly called for a programmatic environmental analysis for each region before offshore wind decisions are made, and our questions and concerns regarding the cumulative ecological impacts of large-scale ocean habitat conversion are beginning to be echoed by the conservation community. These concerns were made even more critical given the recent publication of a study finding offshore wind farms change marine ecosystems. (1) The California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME) is a highly productive coastal marine ecosystem in the northeast Pacific Ocean and preserving and protecting the ecological function and integrity of the CCLME should not be secondary to privatizing our oceans with unproven technology producing unknown impacts.
Equitable strategies for climate action must directly involve impacted communities to achieve enduring solutions. Instead, investment banks and goliath energy corporations are teaming up, fueled by taxpayer-funded credits, to acquire public lands for private use – an activity that would be highly regulated in any other sphere. Despite the lackluster auction, the huge geographic areas covered by the leases demonstrate the need for strong oversight and transparency on matters of environment, health, safety, and social justice. Important work stands before us to establish such policies for offshore wind.
As noted above, the auction raised roughly $757 Million, a far cry from the $4.37 Billion raised during the New York Bight auction ten months ago. The per acre value of the California lease sales averaged $2,061/acre compared to $8,831/acre for the New York Bight lease sales. The three lease sites off Morro Bay generated $425.6M and the two lease sites off Humboldt $331.5M. Just in 2019, 20 million pounds of seafood was landed by U.S. fishermen in the Eureka Port Complex adjacent to the Humboldt lease sites, an ex-vessel value of $38.6M in that year alone.
To the U.S. based representatives of RWE Offshore Wind Holdings, LLC, California North Floatin, LLC, Equinor Wind US, LLC, Central California Offshore Wind, LLC, and Invenergy California Offshore, LLC, we must work collectively toward developing a better future. We encourage you to constructively engage with the fishing industry, listen authentically to impacted communities, and consider regional level impacts when determining next steps. Your corporations must be willing to take a flexible approach to mitigation based on the significant financial commitments invested in a paper lease. Lease siting did not avoid impacts, so a willingness to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on leases must entail an equal commitment to minimize and mitigate the environmental and socioeconomic impacts to small business owners who feed the nation.
(1) See Offshore wind farms change marine ecosystems, study shows (phys.org)
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About Responsible Offshore Development Alliance
Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies — across the United States — committed to improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses. The Alliance works to directly collaborate with relevant regulatory agencies, scientists, and others to coordinate science and policy approaches to managing development of the Outer Continental Shelf in a way that minimizes conflicts with existing traditional and historical fishing.
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Contact: mike@rodafisheries.org or annie@rodafisheries.org