The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is looking for manpower and increased efficiencies to handle the added workload of offshore wind permit applications expected from President Biden’s goal of 30 GW by 2030, a senior agency official told Reuters’ U.S. Offshore Wind 2021 conference Wednesday.

Michelle Morin, chief of the BOEM Office of Renewable Energy Programs’ environment branch, said the agency expects to handle at least 16 offshore wind projects by 2025. In response, her department is about to hire seven new employees and expects a 30% staffing increase next year.

“We’ve really ramped this up,” Morin said in answer to a question about the agency’s plan to meet the surge in workload. “We are pulling resources from all over the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management” to help with the OSW permitting process.

The agency also expects to improve efficiency by pooling information that is common to several projects, allowing it to assess how to handle those elements and smooth their evaluation process, she said. That way, she added, “we can really focus on the unique aspects of each project” and whether they meet the criteria for agency permit approval, she said.

Certainty vs. Flexibility

Morin spoke on a panel that focused on how to improve the arduous, often lengthy permitting process needed for projects to secure BOEM approval. The panel highlighted the inherent tension between the desire on both sides to provide predictability in a situation for which there are few historic precedents to provide a guide.

Biden has emphasized renewable energy since the start of his administration, with particular emphasis on OSW power. He aims to create a thriving industry that will create jobs and economic opportunity, including new supply chains that can manufacture and deliver wind turbines for projects.

The administration on May 11 approved its first big offshore wind farm, an 800-MW project in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts after a decade-long approval process. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, speaking at the conference Wednesday, said “it took forever for us to get it through the process.” (See BOEM Approves 800-MW Vineyard Wind I.) On Tuesday, the administration announced plans to offer leases for California’s first OSW areas. (See BOEM to Offer Leases for Calif. Offshore Wind.)

Morin said one obstacle to a project’s passage is that it could need the evaluation of 10 or more agencies to get approval. “We’re working together, trying to do a one-government approach because this is one environmental impact statement, one record of decision,” she said.

But project developers could also take steps to make the permitting process smoother and shorter, she said, by providing as much detailed information as possible early on in the process. She noted that developers say that what they need from BOEM is certainty in the process, especially how long it will take. “We also look for certainty,” and that is helped by getting key information early on in the process, she said.

Paul Phifer, permitting manager for Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, said that aside from certainty of schedule, developers look for predictability in the questions that they may be asked later in the project. Atlantic Shores, a joint venture between Shell New Energies US and EDF Renewables North America, is one of two projects seeking to be designated the developer on New Jersey’s second OSW project. (See Developer to Use Union Labor for NJ OSW Project.)

“Having some of the substantive comments come two or three years into project design, for a developer, [is] just too late,” he said. One solution would be to get multiple agencies involved in the permitting process as early as possible, he said. Still, he added, there will always be tension between needing certainty in the process and the ability to make changes if needed.

“We’re all looking to have maximum flexibility because we don’t know exactly often what project technology is going to be available when we start building, or what agreement we might get about purchase power from a state or another entity,” he said. “So we need to maintain flexibility. While maintaining that, I think we still could have conversations, an interagency process, earlier, that give us better guidance and help familiarize the agencies with what we’re contemplating.”

“I think the more you can design that project with close coordination with the key agencies, you have the best picture to foresee future changes,” he said. “Nobody wants a significant change late in the game. I mean, it slows it down. It’s costly. You may be under agreement to provide power to the state by certain time. So there’s a lot of risks associated with those late changes.”

Financing Groundbreaking Projects

Morin added that the agency’s ability to bring certainty may improve with time, as more projects go through the process.

“As we conduct more of these reviews, hopefully we’ll be able to better predict where there might be points that there could be some risks to the schedule,” she said.

Louise Pesce, managing director of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), which has helped finance numerous new energy projects, said investors may also get more accustomed to the process as more projects get underway. She called Biden’s plan for 30 GW “incredibly ambitious.” Investors may see the early projects as higher risk, she said, but that may diminish as the support industries and infrastructure emerge in the U.S., rather than components being imported.

Pesce said she doesn’t anticipate a shortage of financing to develop early U.S. projects, in part because offshore projects have proven their worth in Asia and Europe, where the industry is more advanced.

“Banks that have been active in Asia and Europe are very keen and eager to utilize that experience here in the U.S. and add to liquidity available from the more U.S.-centric lenders,” Pesce said.

“I think that the construction for the first project is going to be slightly more complicated; I won’t say it’s more risky, but it is more complex,” she said. “There’s more components to consider with the U.S. first-mover projects versus the U.K. or the European market, where you have a mature industry of vessels [and a] supply chain established.”

Still, she said, “I think that those are similar risks that lenders are used to seeing elsewhere.”