Six US East Coast governors sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging federal action to support the growing offshore wind industry. Governors Kathy Hochul of New York, Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Wes Moore of Maryland, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Daniel McKee of Rhode Island said without federal action, offshore wind deployment in the country is at serious risk of stalling because States’ ratepayers may be unable to absorb these significant new costs alone.

The signatories asked the administration to take three concrete actions: updating Treasury Guidance, establishing a revenue sharing program, and expediting clean energy permitting.

"We urgently request updated guidance from the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to ensure offshore wind projects are fully eligible for federal clean energy tax credits, including the Domestic Content and Energy Community Bonus Credits to the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and Production Tax Credit (PTC), under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA)," they said.

In addition, they stated that current federal law requires that all revenue generated from offshore wind leases beyond state waters be returned to the U.S. Treasury, leaving ratepayers to bear the brunt of the development costs for these critical projects. "The lease revenue is a cost to offshore wind developers, meaning that States’ electricity ratepayers will bear the cost of leases for projects that ultimately interconnect into States’ electric grids. A portion of these revenues should be re-distributed back to the proximate States that bear these costs as proposed by the bipartisan Reinvesting in Shoreline Economies and Ecosystems (RISEE) Act". 

In the letter, the governors also stressed that clean energy permitting needs to be accelerated and warned that slow permitting can severely limit your ability to grow the clean energy economy at the pace needed to meet the decarbonization goals that science demands. 

Following the call by the governors to the Biden Administration, American Clean Power Association (ACP) Chief Executive Officer Jason Grumet recognized that this letter comes at a crucial time, when the industry is looking to grow rapidly but faces obstacles due to inflation, supply chain constraints and permitting delays. 

"The success of offshore wind development in these states will go a long way towards determining whether we achieve the Biden Administration’s 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 objective," Grumet said.

The ACP CEO finally stated that "ACP echoes these six governors’ call and will continue working with the Biden Administration to fully deploy the tools provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and address bottlenecks in the federal permitting process hindering the industry’s ability to meet the state and federal deployment goals. ACP also joins these states in urging the White House to support Senators Cassidy and Whitehouse’s RISEE Act, which will provide hundreds of millions of dollars to states adjacent to offshore wind leases to help coastal communities that are on the front lines of climate change."