Texas Scorecard by Katy Drollinger | July 25, 2022
The project will cover an area larger than the city of Houston.
As Texas’ power grid struggles to keep up with record-breaking heat waves, the Biden Administration unveiled plans to build a 546,645 acre wind farm 24 miles off the coast of Galveston.
President Joe Biden designated the massive acreage as a “Wind Energy Area” and directed federal officials to lease the expanse to a wind energy company. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a branch of the Department of the Interior, claims the project will produce enough energy to power 2.3 million homes.
In October 2021, the Department of the Interior highlighted 30 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico as potential wind farm sites. After listening to public comments and reviewing possible impacts on marine life in the gulf, the department cut the proposed area down to 734,688 acres.
The updated plan also includes a 188,023 acre wind farm 56 miles off the shore of Lake Charles, Louisiana. Both initiatives are part of President Joe Biden’s recent push to shift U.S. energy reliance away from oil and natural gas. Last year Biden set a goal to produce 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, which the administration claims could power 10 million homes, a mere 7 percent of the total number of U.S. homes.
More:
https://texasscorecard.com/federal/biden-proposes-500000-acre-wind-farm-off-galveston-coast/