Happy Nice Mall

“This is huge, very important. Dan Reicher, who served as assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration and now advises Magellan Wind, said, “This is where we can go with offshore wind that we’ve never had before in the United States. a signal,” he said. He is developing projects with offshore floating turbines.

“I have been in the wind industry for a long time,” said Mr. Reicher. “This is a repeat of what we did a few decades ago when we accelerated onshore wind, going from being a small niche energy source to a mainstream, affordable power source.”

Still, there’s no guarantee that companies will lease space and build wind farms in federal waters. Once offshore areas are identified, they will be subject to lengthy federal, state, and local reviews. If potential sites could harm endangered species, conflict with military activities, damage underwater archaeological sites, or damage local industries such as tourism, the federal government may not consider them suitable for lease.

In response to other offshore wind farms, commercial fishing groups and onshore landowners will likely try to halt the projects. In the Gulf of Mexico, where oil and gas exploration is an important part of the economy, fossil fuel companies may battle the development of wind power as a threat to their entire business model, not just their local operations.

“It’s really problematic to make these announcements and make them in very political ways, when we don’t yet know what it means, in what area, what the impact of these projects will be,” he said. Anne Hawkins, executive director of the Alliance for Responsible Offshore Development, a coalition of fisheries groups. “In an ideal world, when you welcome a new industry, you do it in stages, not all at once.”

Ministry of Interior officials said that they will take these matters into consideration.

“We’re working to facilitate a series of projects that will build trust for the offshore wind industry,” said Amanda Lefton, director of the Department of the Interior’s Office of Ocean Energy Management. “At the same time, we want to reduce potential conflict as much as possible while meeting the administration’s target of delivering 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.”