The COLLABORATE Act would put domestic offshore wind development on track by improving permitting, coordination, and cooperation between agencies and with developers and stakeholders, creating a holistic process for offshore wind transmission, and boosting support for fisheries and other potentially affected groups, including the establishment of a compensation fund for eligible recipients.
“Rhode Island has led an early charge in America’s offshore wind development. My legislation applies the Ocean State model of good-faith cooperation to the federal interagency process while fixing permitting and transmission problems to harness our abundant offshore wind potential,” said Whitehouse. “The pathway to a clean energy future is narrowing fast, and we can’t afford to lose investments to bureaucratic delays and endless red tape. I’m hopeful we can pass this bill swiftly and bring offshore wind online nationwide.”
The United States established a goal to develop 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030. Offshore wind has the potential to provide enough electricity to meet two times our nation’s current demand. In 2016, Rhode Island became home to America’s first offshore wind farm, located off the coast of Block Island.
Despite its promise, offshore wind development has suffered setbacks, and it is now estimated that we will not reach our 30 GW goal until 2033 at the earliest. Meanwhile, China leads the world in offshore wind with nearly 40 GW installed. This will continue unless we swiftly change course. In the first half of this year, China accounted for 66 out of the record-setting 91.2 GW of offshore wind turbine orders.
Whitehouse released a discussion draft of the bill in January 2024.
The COLLABORATE Act would:
Improve Permitting, Coordination, and Engagement:
- Establish a five-year leasing schedule for offshore wind, updated every two years
- Require federal agency engagement with potentially affected groups in the areas identified by the schedule
- Conduct and make available for public comment studies evaluating the potential impact of offshore wind development on the human, marine, and coastal environments within the identified leasing area
- Authorize $25 million annually for capacity grants, with 2% set aside for Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations
- Use impact study results to inform identification of draft offshore wind lease areas; evaluate draft lease areas for other factors, such as potential power capacity, commercial viability, existing and future transmission availability and capacity
- Update BOEM’s responsibilities for renewable energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf · Affirm use of a multi-factor auction for leasing and cap the use of non-monetary factors at 25% of the bid amount, in keeping with BOEM’s current practice and to support future revenue sharing with adjacent states
- Catalog outreach and feedback from agencies and stakeholders in a Construction and Operations Plan (COP) submitted for approval
- Set a timeframe to issue outstanding authorizations following BOEM’s issuance of its Record of Decision
- Place offshore wind project judicial reviews with the Court of Appeals for the circuit in which the affected project is located
Create a Holistic Process for Offshore Transmission:
- Establish BOEM as the lead agency for environmental review and authorizations for offshore wind transmission facilities
- Initiate a BOEM rule for permitting offshore wind transmission, to include consideration of a call for right-of-way information; determining interest in the use of one or more right-of-way(s), including backboned or meshed rights-of-way; establishing issuance of rights-of-way on a competitive or non-competitive basis, to consider whether a developer has an award from a state via a competitive process or an existing agreement to interconnect a transmission project; requirements for environmental reviews for independent transmission projects and transmission projects within existing rights-of-ways; and the requirements of OCSLA Section 8(p)(4)
- Identify preferred offshore wind transmission cable corridors and making lines in such corridors eligible for federal transmission program financing and a new geotechnical and geophysical survey grant program; such lines, however, are not eligible for FERC backstop authority
- Establish standards to integrate different offshore wind transmission technologies
- Direct FERC to require consideration of offshore wind reliability, resiliency, resource adequacy, and multivalue cost allocation methodologies in any interregional rulemaking
- Direct to states to evaluate the incorporation of offshore wind onto their grid systems, if they have not already begun or completed such a process
- Fund the research and development to build an integrated offshore wind transmission network
- Establish an offshore wind task force to advise on the transmission rulemaking, corridor identification, financing, and manufacturing needs
Support for Fisheries and Other Potentially Affected Groups:
- Establish a fund and a formula that would provide funds from developers to compensate affected groups
- Create a gear loss program, modeled off of the existing program for offshore oil and gas
- Authorize $30 million annually for research on the impacts of offshore wind development on fisheries resources, with 2% set aside for Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations
- Authorize $30 million annually to fund technologies that support the coexistence of offshore wind development with other ocean users, with 2% set aside for Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations
The COLLABORATE Act would also complement Whitehouse’s RISEE Act, which aims to create a new dedicated stream of funding from offshore wind development for coastal protection and resiliency, by capping bidding credits that developers can use in lease auctions to protect states’ offshore wind revenues. The RISEE Act advanced through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a bipartisan vote in late November.
The full text of the legislation is available here.
