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BOEM to conduct regional environmental review for New York Bight leases

4C Offshore | Tom Russell
By: Tom Russell 14/07/2022 BOEM

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced it will conduct a regional environmental review of six lease areas offshore New York and New Jersey, in an area known as the New York Bight. Leases for these six areas were awarded through BOEM’s February 2022 auction that brought in over $4.3 billion.

This is the first time BOEM has conducted a regional analysis containing multiple lease areas for offshore renewable energy. Additional environmental analyses specific to each proposed wind energy project will build off this programmatic review once BOEM receives individual Construction and Operations Plans (COPs) from the leaseholders.

BOEM will publish a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) in the Federal Register on 15 July 2022, which will initiate a 30-day public comment “scoping” period. Comments gathered during this time will help BOEM identify what it should consider as part of the PEIS. The PEIS will analyse potential impacts from wind energy development activities in the New York Bight region, as well as measures that can be taken to avoid, minimize, mitigate, and monitor such potential impacts.

During the public comment period, BOEM will hold
three virtual public meetings.

“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to unlocking the economic potential of offshore wind as a part of combating the climate crisis before us,” said BOEM Director Amanda Lefton. “This new regional approach is an evolution of our process to help ensure timely decisions that advance offshore wind while protecting the ocean environment and marine life. In addition, this approach ensures both a comprehensive view of the New York Bight area and improved process efficiencies for future project reviews.”

The six lease areas auctioned totalled over 488,000 acres in the New York Bight. It was the nation’s highest-grossing competitive offshore energy lease sale in history, including oil and gas lease sales. More information on the auction can be found
here.


For more information on offshore wind farms worldwide, click here. You can also view projects worldwide on 4C Offshore's Interactive map.

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