Biden continues advancing US renewables agenda that Trump aims to freeze

The administration of US President Joe Biden continued an 11th-hour renewable energy push that included launching a review of a major offshore wind project for New York while recommending a near-tripling of its clean energy target for public lands.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced Jan. 14 that it would begin an environmental review of the Vineyard Mid-Atlantic wind project offshore New York and New Jersey. The project is one of six located in the area known as the New York Bight, which attracted over $4 billion in bids in 2022 -- the highest amount ever received for an offshore energy lease sale.

The 2-GW Vineyard wind project is one of the largest proposed for the eastern seaboard and would involve up to 117 turbines. The largest-capacity project is Dominion Energy Inc.'s 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project located off Virginia Beach, Virginia, followed by the 2.4-GW SouthCoast Wind Energy Offshore Project off Massachusetts that BOEM approved in December 2024.

Conservatives aligned with President-elect Donald Trump's energy policies criticized the outgoing administration's efforts to cement its renewables goals in place.

Tom Pyle, president of fossil-fuel advocacy group American Energy Alliance, lamented in an email that Biden was rushing approval for wind energy, an intermittent source, while restricting access to federal waters for oil and natural gas production.

BOEM will publish a notice of intent on Jan. 15, officially kicking off the environmental impact review for the Vineyard Mid-Atlantic wind project's construction and operations plan less than one week before Trump is sworn in.

The review's launch follows a Jan. 13 announcement by New Jersey Republican representative Jeff Van Drew that he had been tapped by Trump to draft a presidential executive order on offshore wind. Once signed, the order would direct BOEM to halt all offshore wind activity for six months, pending a federal review of BOEM's approval process.

Van Drew has been a staunch critic of the Biden administration's push to site and deploy 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. He said in a statement that he believes BOEM did not perform adequate reviews of how these projects would affect local seaside economies and the environment before approving their construction permits.

Meanwhile, the US Energy Department released the results of a new multi-agency study led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which proposes a target for onshore renewable energy approvals by 2035 that could more than triple Biden's target of 25 GW by 2025.

Calling it the most comprehensive study of its kind, the DOE said the findings show that public lands could technically support more than 7,700 GW of renewable energy capacity.

But in examining the need to balance natural resource protection with electricity demand growth, the study found that 51 GW to 84 GW of renewable energy could be feasibly built on public lands by 2035. This would require using only around 0.5% of total federal land area in the contiguous US, the DOE said.

"That level of deployment by 2035 ... is enough to provide up to about 10% of the reliable, renewable energy needed to reach net-zero emissions in the electricity sector," the DOE said in a news release. "The Department of the Interior has already permitted more than 30 GW of clean energy projects on federal lands, surpassing its congressionally authorized 25 GW goal well ahead of the 2025 target date."

The report was released ahead of a Jan. 16 confirmation hearing for Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota selected by Trump to head Interior. He is expected to be key in making Trump's plan to increase oil and gas production on federal lands a reality. Pyle's group has been pressing Republicans to ensure Burgum commits to using his authority to expand fossil fuel leasing on federal lands.