Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Dr. Colin Kahl, and California Governor Gavin Newsom have announced an agreement to advance areas for offshore wind off the northern and central coasts of California.
These initial areas for offshore wind development could bring up to 4.6GW of clean energy to the grid. The Department of the Interior, in cooperation with the Department of Defense and the State of California, has identified an area (the Morro Bay 399 Area) that will support 3GW of offshore wind on roughly 399 square miles off California's central coast region, northwest of Morro Bay. The Department of the Interior is also advancing the Humboldt Call Area as a potential Wind Energy Area (WEA), located off northern California.
BOEM, in partnership with California, will hold an Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force meeting on June 24 to discuss the identified areas off the north and central coasts as potential WEAs. Following the task force meeting, the WEAs can be finalised and will undergo environmental analysis. The processes for the northern and central coasts will then be merged in a Proposed Sale Notice (PSN) for one lease sale auction, targeted for mid-2022.
