New York Bight Lease Sale Has Potential to Generate Up to Seven Gigawatts of Clean Energy, Power Nearly Two Million Homes
Governor Hochul: “This is a once-in-a-generational opportunity, in my opinion. This is going to give us a chance to position ourselves globally, as well as to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity, and I’m very excited about it.”
Governor Kathy Hochul today in conjunction with United States Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will be holding a wind auction on February 23 for an area consisting of 488,000 acres located in the New York Bight, along with a plan for a coordinated offshore wind supply chain effort between New York, New Jersey and BOEM, titled “A Shared Vision on the Development of an Offshore Wind Supply Chain.” This announcement builds on the nation-leading offshore wind priorities outlined in Governor Hochul’s 2022 State of the State and represents a significant step forward in advancing the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goal to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks are available below:
Well thank you very much, good morning everyone, and it is a pleasure to be part of this team. This opportunity that we’re presented with here today is actually transformative, not just for New York and New Jersey, but for our nation. And to announce this together with an incredible representative of the Biden administration, Secretary Collins, who’s been committed to this cause for many, many years, to ensure that we do leave our children a far better future than the one we all inherited, and I look forward to working with her and her team as we go forward. And unlocking this opportunity is exactly what we’ve been waiting for, for over 4 years since this was all pent up during the Trump Administration that did not see the vision as clearly as all of us do here today. So, thank you, Madam Secretary. Also, this had not have happened without the tremendous partnership and for the rest of the nation to see what collaboration truly looks like, look no further than to see the relationship I have with my fellow governor, Phil Murphy, and there’s so many more opportunities we can seize together than instead of in a competitive fashion, and that’s how we’re going to lead the nation and what this really looks like.
Also, I want to thank our partners in labor. This does not get built without the hard-working men and women of labor. And to have Liz Shuler add her voice to this conversation is critically important, because that’s why we do what we do. We do this, yes, to protect the future, but also to give people, particularly who had been so hard hit by this pandemic, an opportunity to transition into jobs, and it’s up to all of us to ensure that the training opportunities are there, and that’s why we have an offshore wind training institute right on Long Island. And we’re going to continue leaning hard into this, as well as opening the door for opportunities for women, I don’t see as many women as I want to see in these industries, as well as people of color. And I’m excited about the potential of this, with this unlocking of this auction on February 23rd is going to create such an opportunity for us. It’s not just this opportunity but it’s also the supply chain.
Bringing back good paying manufacturing jobs that should never have been offshore, and to support businesses to come and build in our region, and to celebrate and give more opportunities for those who have already been here, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, which is opening opportunities to manufacture turbines up near the Port of Albany, send them down the Hudson River, and that makes sense. And I’m proud that our state has been the nation’s leader in having the largest active offshore wind portfolio in the nation. Five major projects totaling 4,300 Megawatts of capacity. And I spoke about this in my State of the State, as did Governor Murphy, as a statement of our priorities.
And what we’re going to do with this joint project, our shared vision, on the development of offshore wind supply chain, is not just a piece of paper. It’s going to result in our representatives literally sitting down in a matter of weeks to game out a strategy that will work to bring the supply chain opportunities right here where we need them the most. So this is a once-in-a-generational opportunity, in my opinion. This is going to give us a chance to position ourselves globally, as well as to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity, and I’m very excited about it. We have the largest offshore wind targets in the nation in New York. 9,000 Megawatts by 2035, which is right around the corner, and I’m so proud that we’re already halfway there, and this is going to help us get over the finish line and certainly head into a better future. So I’ll conclude by thinking about something that was said exactly sixty years ago, when I think about the future of green energy in our nation, how we’re going to do that, what does this look like? What is the shape? And I have to say, with all the reference to Bob Dylan, “the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.” So that’s what we’re talking about here today.