BOEMRE Director Delivers Opening Remarks for
Renewable Energy Workshop
Focuses on Environmental Considerations for Offshore Wind Energy Development
HERNDON, Va. — Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director
Michael R. Bromwich delivered opening remarks today at the bureau’s
Atlantic Wind Energy Workshop in Herndon, Va.
The bureau hosted the three-day
workshop as part of a Memorandum of Understanding between the
Department of the Interior and the Deparment of Energy to coordinate
environmental monitoring and baseline studies in support of
environmental assessment and consultations for potential projects in
the mid-Atlantic Wind Energy Areas. As part of the “Smart from the
Start” wind energy initiative to spur renewable energy development
on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), this workshop will assist
BOEMRE and its federal partners in environmental and technical
reviews of Wind Energy Areas and in the evaluation of new projects.
Director Bromwich touched on the role
of offshore renewable energy development in the Administration’s
Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, and explained how the bureau’s
Offshore Renewable Energy Program is being elevated through the
overall reorganization of the former Minerals Management Service.
The Director also highlighted steps the bureau is taking internally
and with other federal agencies and state partners to streamline the
leasing process while ensuring environmental protection as projects
move forward.
Director Bromwich’s remarks, as
prepared for delivery, are below:
Good morning. Welcome
to the Atlantic Wind Energy Workshop. It’s a pleasure to be here to
kick-off what I expect will be three days of informative discussion,
useful information-sharing and interdisciplinary analyses. We hope
that this Workshop will assist in guiding future federal research
priorities and strengthen the nation’s collective scientific and
technical knowledge to support responsible leasing and development
of wind energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
Renewable energy is a
high priority of this Administration. On March 30, the
Administration released a Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future,
highlighting the vital role energy plays in our economy.
This blueprint sets forth President Obama’s
proposal for an ambitious but achievable standard for America: by
2035, to generate 80 percent of our electricity from a diverse set
of clean energy sources. Meeting the President’s target will
position the United States as a global leader in developing and
manufacturing clean energy technologies. It will ensure continued
growth in the renewable energy sector. And it will spur innovation
and investment in our nation’s energy infrastructure.
At the Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), we are
responsible for renewable energy resources on the nation’s OCS,
which itself holds great potential for helping to meet the
President’s goals. To make this vision for offshore renewable energy
development a reality, we are faced with tremendous opportunities as
well as complex challenges.
Information from this
week’s meeting will assist us and our federal partners as we
conduct critical environmental and technical
reviews of wind energy areas and as we evaluate future projects. I
am going to briefly lay out the framework we are working with, and
the steps we are taking to aggressively move forward to achieve our
goals.
Our agency is relatively new to
renewable energy, having first received the regulatory
responsibility for offshore renewable energy in 2005. Even so, we
have already reached some important milestones.
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In 2009, we
published our renewable energy regulatory framework and issued
four leases for resource data collection offshore Delaware and
New Jersey.
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In 2010, we
initiated the commercial leasing process off Delaware, Maryland
and Massachusetts. The first commercial wind lease was signed by
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Cape Wind Associates
for a project in federal waters offshore Massachusetts.
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And in 2011, we
initiated the commercial leasing process off New Jersey and we
received 11 expressions of interest from 10 companies for
commercial wind development offshore Massachusetts.
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We also approved the
Cape Wind Construction and Operations Plan, which makes it the
first plan of its kind that has been approved. BOEMRE conducted
an environmental assessment – or EA – to determine whether there
were any significant environmental impacts that had not been
previously addressed and concluded that all impacts had been
properly examined. We also issued a Record of Decision, which
details the terms and conditions that Cape Wind Associates will
need to follow in addition to those established in the lease
agreement.
These accomplishments
are just the first steps on the path to a future with a substantial
offshore renewable energy industry. All of us at BOEMRE are
dedicated to leading the way on this journey, and I welcome this
opportunity to share with you some of our other achievements and
update you on where we are headed.
I. Reorganization
We
are in the process of reorganizing the former Minerals Management
Service (MMS) into three strong, separate agencies within the
Department of the Interior. The new structure will eliminate the
inherent mission conflicts that existed when MMS was responsible for
promoting resource development, enforcing safety regulations, and
collecting revenues from offshore operations. The President’s
Commission on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill found that these
conflicts resulted in an agency that was guided for decades by a
predominant interest in maximizing revenues for the U.S. Treasury,
rather than promoting safety and rigorous oversight. That was
unacceptable, and that is why one of our guiding principles has been
to eliminate those conflicts by separating and clearly delineating
missions across the three new agencies.
The first stage of reorganization
took effect on October 1, 2010, when the revenue collection arm of
the former MMS became the Office of Natural Resources Revenue – now
located in a separate part of the Department of the Interior,
reporting through a separate chain of command.
The resource
management and safety and enforcement functions of the former MMS
currently reside in BOEMRE. On October 1, these functions will be
separated out into two new independent agencies with clearly focused
missions. These agencies will be the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management - or BOEM - and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental
Enforcement – or BSEE.
BOEM will be
responsible for managing development of the nation’s offshore
resources, including renewable energy
resources, in an environmentally and economically responsible way.
BSEE will develop and enforce safety
and environmental regulations.
Within BOEM, we have
elevated our Renewable Energy Program, and it will be led by Maureen
Bornholdt, whom many of you know and whom you will hear from this
morning. The Renewable Energy Program will report directly to the
office of the Director in BOEM, with responsibilities to formulate
national strategy and develop policies and practices, as well as
manage offshore renewable energy activities.
This new
organizational structure relative to renewable energy will enhance
our ability to facilitate efficient and environmentally-sound
renewable energy development. By making offshore renewable energy an
important headquarters function, we can best advance the
Department’s missions and strategic goals, and be responsive to the
needs of this emerging industry.
We will rely on
BSEE’s engineering expertise to provide critical input into permit
reviews and the inspection processes for wind, wave and ocean
current projects once they have been constructed and are operating.
And in the longer term, when an industry has been stood up, we might
expect to see some additional capacity that needs to be added in
BSEE.
II. Scientific
Integrity in Decision-Making
One of the guiding
principles of our reform agenda for offshore energy development is a
renewed commitment to use credible and unfiltered scientific data as
the basis for sound decision-making.
Renewable energy
development has emerged as an opportunity to provide valuable energy
to the nation. But this opportunity brings with it new challenges
for the environmental, engineering and structural analyses that are
required to evaluate offshore energy projects. Our internal
scientific community will have a very strong voice as these analyses
proceed.
Last September,
Secretary Salazar established a Scientific Integrity Policy for the
Department of the Interior. BOEMRE embraces its principles – that
government employees must never suppress or alter, without new
scientific or technological evidence, any scientific or technical
findings or conclusions.
While the Secretarial
Order formalizes this policy, we embraced this concept as a keystone
of our program in the 2009 final regulatory framework for offshore
renewable energy. Under this framework, we continue to use
principles of adaptive management to integrate results from
environmental studies and lessons learned from onsite monitoring
into our project oversight and planning.
The science and research programs
within BOEMRE are fully engaged in supporting our renewable energy
program. BOEMRE’s strong Environmental Studies program is actively
collecting biological, geospatial, socio-economic and cultural
information in offshore areas that hold renewable energy development
potential. This data is critical in
determining and evaluating the effects of OCS
renewable activities on natural, historical and human resources, and
in defining the appropriate monitoring and mitigation of those
effects.
Additionally, the agency’s Technology
Assessment and Research Program is conducting research associated
with operational safety, engineering standards for ocean-based
renewable energy devices, and associated pollution prevention.
Creating and
maintaining a culture of scientific integrity will enable us to make
wind energy development decisions with a full, science-based
understanding of the risks posed by those activities and what can
and should be done to mitigate those risks.
III. EPAct and the
Regulatory Framework
BOEMRE took on the
role as the manager of OCS renewable energy leasing and development
following enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Some of the
key mandates of law address safety; protection of the environment;
coordination with affected state, local and tribal governments, and
other federal agencies; and a fair return for the use of OCS lands.
The law also called for the development of regulations to carry out
these and other mandates.
The final regulatory
framework for renewable energy activities was published in April
2009. The framework provides a comprehensive approach to offshore
renewable energy initiatives - from preliminary study and lease
issuance, to construction and operation, to decommissioning of
projects.
The regulatory
framework lays out all of BOEMRE’s information and process
requirements—for example, how to submit lease requests and
associated plans. We have been continually augmenting it with more
detailed guidance documents. The framework and relevant guidance can
be found on our website:
www.boemre.gov.
The framework
outlines two different leasing processes: competitive and
noncompetitive. Legislation requires that OCS wind leases be issued
on a competitive basis unless we formally determine that there is no
competitive interest after the public has been notified of proposed
lease areas. After leases are issued, lessees must submit plans for
site assessment and construction and operations activities for
BOEMRE to review and approve.
The regulatory
process requires BOEMRE to comply with a host of federal statutes,
including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Coastal
Zone Management Act, Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act.
To ensure that we
meet the mandate of coordination and consultation that is required
by law, we have established intergovernmental task forces consisting
of representatives from the respective states, local and tribal
governments, and other federal agencies with equities in the areas
being examined.
We have established
these task forces in 10 states - nine on the East Coast and one on
the West Coast, and they have proved to be an extremely useful tool
in helping to inform our decision-making as we consider areas of the
OCS for renewable energy leasing and development. It’s important to
note that, while I’m focusing on wind today, one of these task
forces is concentrating on marine hydro-kinetic energy – energy from
ocean waves.
IV. Smart from the
Start
In November 2010,
Secretary Salazar launched the “Smart from the Start” wind energy
initiative for the Atlantic OCS. This initiative was developed in
response to concerns that the process of formulating and approving
offshore renewable projects took too long. “Smart from the Start” is
designed to facilitate siting and leasing for commercial wind
projects on the OCS, to encourage responsible development and to
ensure that projects are built in the right way and in the right
places.
“Smart from the
Start” has three key elements:
(1) streamlined
processes for commercial wind lease issuance;
(2) identification
of Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) followed by concerted information
gathering; and
(3) proceeding on a
parallel but separate track to evaluate offshore transmission line
proposals.
We are continuing to
work on our regulatory processes to make them more efficient. In
May, Secretary Salazar and I announced the elimination of a
redundant step in the noncompetitive leasing process for commercial
renewable energy development on the OCS.
Prior to our action,
regulations required us to issue two separate notices to determine
whether there was competitive interest in a particular area when we
initiate the renewable energy leasing process. Even if the initial
Federal Register notice attracted no competitive interest, we were
required to issue a second notice to reconfirm that lack of
competitive interest. That struck us as inefficient and unnecessary,
and we worked to remove that second step. This final rule took
effect on June 15.
This rule change is
only one step toward making the leasing process more efficient for
the emerging offshore renewable energy sector. We will continue to
explore and use the flexibility contained within the regulatory
framework and continue to review the it to identify additional
opportunities to reduce the total time involved in the leasing and
permitting process.
Under “Smart from the
Start,” we are working with state, federal, local and tribal
entities and other interested stakeholders to better coordinate the
selection of suitable areas for potential development off the coasts
of Atlantic states. Where appropriate,
we want to look at the potential for leasing in a regional context,
through a regional EA that will let us know whether there are any
unacceptable environmental impacts from the proposal to lease in a
specific region. Our
intergovernmental task forces are helping us identify areas with
generally abundant wind energy resources and fewer potential
environmental and use conflicts than other offshore areas. The task
forces play a key role in facilitating communications among federal,
state, local and tribal entities to ensure that information needs
and multiple use concerns and solutions are identified early in the
leasing process.
Another important
aspect of the “Smart from the Start” effort is efficient and close
coordination with other federal agencies to compile and analyze
existing site data. To that end, Secretary Salazar established the
Atlantic Offshore Wind Interagency Working Group. This group serves
a vital role in collecting and sharing data about designated WEAs.
The first WEAs—offshore
Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia—were announced in
February, and we hope to begin offering leases in these areas by the
end of the year. We are working to identify other areas that appear
most suitable for further leasing consideration in the northern
Atlantic off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and in
the southern Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina.
A key element of our
new approach is to use an EA to evaluate the potential impacts
associated with lease issuance and site assessment and
characterization activities in the WEAs. The leasing process could
be shortened if the EA finds that there are no significant
associated impacts.
Under this approach,
the detailed analysis of the effects of building and operating wind
facilities will be deferred until lessees submit actual construction
and operations plans. We will then undertake a separate NEPA
process—most likely through the preparation of an environmental
impact statement - or EIS—to analyze those activities.
Just yesterday, we
released for public comment a draft EA for offshore commercial wind
leasing and site assessment in the first four WEAs. This draft EA
considers potential environmental and socioeconomic effects of
issuing wind energy leases, subsequent site characterization
surveys, and approval of site assessment activities in designated
WEAs offshore New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Comments
on the draft EA will be considered in the preparation of the final
EA and will assist BOEMRE in determining whether an EIS needs to be
prepared, or whether a Finding of No Significant Impact is warranted
in connection with issuing renewable energy leases on the OCS
offshore the mid-Atlantic states.
As for the third
element of the “Smart from the Start” initiative, just last March we
received our first application for an offshore transmission
backbone. The backbone would support multiple wind projects in the
Atlantic and would provide several interconnections to the grid.
This right-of-way application from
Atlantic Grid Holdings for the Atlantic Wind Connection Project
proposes to install a transmission line offshore New York, New
Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia that would collect power
generated by future offshore wind generation and deliver it to the
grid. We are currently in the process of reviewing the application
according to the renewable energy regulations. The next step in our
process is to assess whether there is competitive interest.
V. Coordination
In
addition to the Task Forces and Working Group I mentioned, we are
taking several other steps to enhance coordination as we move
forward in the area of offshore renewable energy.
Secretary Salazar
joined with 11 Atlantic state
governors in 2010 to establish the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy
Consortium to foster a unified effort to bring Atlantic offshore
wind energy to market. The Department of the Interior and states in
the consortium adopted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) calling
for the development of action plans and recommendations related to
the regulatory and permitting processes, and to acquire and use
scientific data.
Also in
2010, DOI and the Department of Energy (DOE) signed an MOU to
address numerous offshore renewable energy issues of mutual interest
to expeditiously develop a sustainable, world-class offshore wind
industry in a way that reduces conflict with other ocean uses and
protects coastal and marine resources. The two
agencies also announced a national offshore wind strategy.
The national strategy calls for 10 gigawatts of new wind energy
capacity from offshore sources – including state waters and the
Great Lakes – by 2020, and 54 gigawatts by 2030.
Under
the MOU, the Environmental and Social Sciences Working Group was
established to develop environmental monitoring and mitigation
protocols. A goal of this group is to develop and conduct a series
of workshops, like this one, to bring together as many entities as
possible that are conducting environmental surveys on the Atlantic
OCS to share information, facilitate coordination, and to work
toward adoption of common survey methods.
We have also been
working with a number of federal agencies to improve coordination
and maximize efficiencies in our research programs and regulatory
processes. We have signed MOUs with the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). We have MOUs in
development with other federal agencies that we are working to
execute in the near future.
The “Smart from the
Start” initiative will be fully integrated with President Obama’s
July 2010 Executive Order on coastal marine spatial planning
efforts, or CMSP. We worked with our
partners at NOAA to provide the geospatial framework needed for the
broader CMSP initiative that is called for in the President's ocean
agenda. We gathered the most comprehensive data about these regional
offshore areas, and made this information accessible to the public
last month in a database called the Multipurpose Marine Cadastre.
Another important part of the
coordination process calls for actively engaging key stakeholders.
BOEMRE continues to reach out to those outside of government to
clarify our regulatory processes, share information and to identify
and address issues concerning potential OCS renewable energy
activities.
VI. Conclusion
We all have a role to
play in building a secure energy future for America. Here today, we
are moving forward collectively in support of the Administration’s
ambitious clean energy goals. Success is achievable. How and when we
attain that success is, in part, dependent upon the active
communication and coordination among our respective agencies and
organizations.
I encourage you to
fully engage in discussions over the next three days to help define
and advance our collective scientific knowledge, identify critical
data gaps, and outline strategies for enhancing collaboration in
future environmental studies and research.
As BOEMRE continues
with its comprehensive regulatory reforms and reorganization, I
assure you that we will remain focused and dedicated to leading the
nation toward a renewable energy future.
Thank you for your
time and attention. And thank you for your participation in the
Atlantic Wind Workshop. I will be happy to take a few
questions at this
time.
Contact: BOEMRE
Public Affairs