Briefing: Reducing regulatory turbulence for US offshore wind development

With the recent announcement of a joint goal among federal agencies to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and the target for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to approve the Construction and Operations Plans of at least 16 offshore wind farms by 2025, the US offshore wind industry appears to be on the cusp of a major expansion. However, a literature review of the history and current state of the US offshore wind industry indicates that resource constraints within the BOEM and obstacles posed by the complex regulatory process could prevent the industry from reaching its full potential. A critical analysis was conducted on information and data collected from primary and secondary sources to propose strategies for mitigating and avoiding this regulatory turbulence. This paper concludes that BOEM must increase its bandwidth and accelerate the rate of offshore wind project review and approval by pursuing resource augmentation measures and opportunities to introduce efficiencies into its regulatory approach.