BOEM Offshore Wind & Renewable Energy Leasing

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management can lease the Outer Continental Shelf — the 1.7 billion acres of federal seabed off U.S. coasts — not just for oil and gas, but for any energy purpose. Under Section 8(p) of the OCS Lands Act (43 U.S.C. § 1337), BOEM began issuing offshore wind leases in 2009, and by the mid-2020s had authorized enough capacity to fundamentally reshape the U.S. electricity grid. 30 CFR Part 585 is the regulation governing those leases — the complete framework for how a developer bids on, acquires, plans, builds, and pays rent for an offshore wind project on federal waters.

Current Rule (2026)

What This Rule Does

30 CFR Part 585 is the complete legal architecture for offshore renewable energy development on federal waters. It answers every foundational question a wind developer faces when looking at a BOEM lease: How do I get one? What does it cost? What must I submit before I can build? What financial guarantees must I maintain? What happens if I go bankrupt?

The unlawfulness baseline (§ 585.104): No person may construct, operate, or maintain any facility on the OCS to produce, transport, or transmit electricity or other energy products from any renewable resource without a BOEM-issued lease or grant. There is no self-help path to offshore renewable energy — the regulatory gateway is mandatory for any activity on federal OCS.

Three lease types (§ 585.202): BOEM issues commercial leases for full-scale power generation, limited leases for meteorological towers, lidar buoys, and other site assessment or testing activities, and research activity leases for academic or technology-development projects. Commercial leases are the ones developers actually build wind farms on.

The competitive leasing process (§§ 585.210–585.226): Most commercial leases go through a multi-step competitive auction:

1. BOEM publishes a Request for Interest (RFI) inviting industry and communities to identify areas of interest
2. If competitive interest exists, BOEM publishes a Call for Information and Nominations in the Federal Register requesting formal bids and third-party comments on the proposed area
3. BOEM conducts area identification — analyzing offshore areas based on wind resources, water depth, distance from shore, competing uses (shipping lanes, fishing grounds, military operations, navigation aids, cable routes), and environmental resources
4. BOEM publishes a Proposed Sale Notice (PSN) requesting public comment on auction format and lease terms
5. BOEM publishes a Final Sale Notice (FSN) at least 30 calendar days before the auction, specifying the lease areas, auction format, bidding procedures, and initial lease terms
6. Auction is held; winner pays bid price and receives the lease

If BOEM determines after public notice that there is no competitive interest, it may issue leases noncompetitively (§ 585.201) — but this is the exception, not the rule, for prime wind areas.

Post-lease planning: Winning the auction is only the first step. A commercial leaseholder must then obtain BOEM approval for a Site Assessment Plan (SAP) before deploying any meteorological towers or floating lidar buoys, and a Construction and Operations Plan (COP) before beginning any project construction. The COP is the most demanding submission — it must include detailed environmental, engineering, and geophysical surveys; project design specifications; decommissioning plans; and financial assurance information. BOEM reviews the COP and conducts its own environmental review (under NEPA) before construction can proceed.

Key Provisions

• § 585.100 — Authority derives from OCS Lands Act § 8; BOEM has Secretary of Interior's delegated authority to manage energy development on the OCS
• § 585.102 — BOEM must balance renewable energy development, safety, environmental protection, other OCS uses (navigation, fishing, military), and national energy needs — no single goal automatically trumps the others
• § 585.104 — Mandatory authorization: no OCS renewable energy activity without a BOEM lease or grant; violation subjects persons to enforcement action under OCSLA
• § 585.105 — Lessee obligations: design and conduct all activities safely, not cause undue harm or damage to natural resources, not interfere unreasonably with other OCS uses, not interfere with subsistence uses in offshore Alaska, comply with all applicable laws
• § 585.107 — Qualified lessees: must be a U.S. citizen or national, domestic corporation, state/territory/political subdivision, or government-owned corporation; must demonstrate technical and financial capability to construct, operate, and decommission the project; foreign-owned entities face additional review
• § 585.109 — Insolvency notification: must notify BOEM within 3 business days of learning of any insolvency or bankruptcy action — BOEM needs to know quickly to protect its ability to require decommissioning bonds from the estate
• § 585.200 — Lease rights: a commercial lease grants the right, subject to approvals, to produce electricity or other energy products from renewable resources in the lease area; these rights are exclusive within the lease boundary but do not override existing shipping, fishing, or military use rights
• § 585.201 — Competitive issuance default; noncompetitive only when no competitive interest exists after public notice
• § 585.203 — BOEM must consult with federal agencies (Coast Guard, DOD, NOAA, EPA), affected states, and local governments, including federally recognized tribal nations with cultural or subsistence interests in the area, before issuing any lease
• § 585.204 — Off-limits: no leasing within National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, National Marine Sanctuaries, or other Congressionally designated areas
• § 585.206 — Lease size determined by BOEM based on anticipated project activities; delineated by official OCS leasing maps using a 3-second of arc protraction diagram system
• § 585.503 — Commercial lease rent: $3 per acre per year, with first 12 months due within 45 days of receiving the executed lease; rent is paid to ONRR (Office of Natural Resources Revenue)
• § 585.506 — Operating fees commence once commercial operations begin; fee formula is based on a percentage of revenues from electricity generated
• § 585.507 — Project easement (the area outside the lease boundary needed for cables, foundations, or access): $5 per acre per year, minimum $450/year
• § 585.508 — ROW and RUE grant rent: $5 per acre per year to ONRR; applies to transmission cables, submarine export cables, and access corridors associated with renewable energy projects
• § 585.501 — Competitive lease financial deposits: BOEM may require a bid deposit before auction; the winning bidder must pay the balance of the accepted bid within a deadline set in the Final Sale Notice — failure forfeits the deposit

How It Affects You

If you are a wind developer or energy company pursuing offshore projects: 30 CFR Part 585 is your primary regulatory roadmap before the first dollar of construction spending. The lease auction process is competitive and expensive — winning bids for major wind lease areas have reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars for large lease areas in the Northeast. After the auction, the COP process typically takes 2–4 years of additional BOEM review, environmental assessment, and interagency consultation before construction can begin. Financial assurance requirements (bonds or letters of credit) will be required to cover decommissioning costs — BOEM increasingly scrutinizes the financial strength of lessees given the long project timelines and capital requirements. Tracking the BOEM offshore energy website (boem.gov/renewable-energy) for new Call for Information and Nominations and Proposed Sale Notices is essential for identifying competitive opportunities.

If you work in coastal fishing, maritime transportation, or offshore infrastructure: BOEM's consultation process under § 585.203 provides formal opportunities for fishing industry representatives, shipping interests, and coastal communities to comment on proposed lease areas before they are issued. Lease areas that overlap commercial fishing grounds, historically active shipping lanes, or existing submarine cables are flagged in the area identification process — BOEM coordinates with NOAA, the Coast Guard, and DOD to avoid or mitigate these conflicts. Once a lease is issued, lessees are legally required not to interfere unreasonably with other lawful uses, but the practical question of fishing access around turbine arrays remains a live policy issue.

If you are in coastal real estate, tourism, or recreation: Offshore wind projects produce visible turbines on the horizon, which has generated substantial local opposition in some areas (particularly in New England). BOEM's NEPA review and state consultation process address visual impacts as part of the environmental review. State governors can object to projects in waters adjacent to their states, although a Governor's objection does not constitute a veto — it triggers additional review. The lease areas available for offshore wind are generally in federal waters 3–200 nautical miles from shore.

If you work in energy policy or state government: The federal offshore wind leasing program operates on federal OCS — states do not own the seabed beyond 3 miles from shore (9 miles in Texas and the Gulf Coast of Florida). This means states cannot issue their own offshore wind leases for the large deepwater wind resources, but states are heavily involved in the supply chain (port infrastructure, manufacturing, transmission interconnection), power purchase agreements, and permitting of transmission cables that cross state waters. State renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and offshore wind targets in states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina are the demand signal driving the BOEM leasing program.

Statutory Authority

This rule implements:

• 43 U.S.C. § 1337(p) (OCS Lands Act Section 8(p), as amended by EPAct 2005) — grants the Secretary of the Interior authority to grant leases, easements, or rights-of-way on the OCS for the purpose of producing, transporting, or transmitting energy from sources other than oil and gas; this is the foundational authority for the entire offshore wind leasing program, added by the Energy Policy Act of 2005

Recent Rulemakings

• 90 FR 24072 (2025) — Most recent amendment to Part 585, updating provisions consistent with the current offshore wind policy environment; specific amendments included revisions to lease administration and financial assurance requirements
• 89 FR 42728 (2024) — Earlier 2024 update; BOEM has amended Part 585 multiple times since the program's 2009 establishment as the offshore wind industry has moved from early-stage to commercial-scale deployment
• The program has operated under significant policy shifts: the Biden administration set a target of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and accelerated leasing; the Trump administration paused many offshore wind leases and environmental reviews in January 2025, creating significant regulatory uncertainty for existing lessees and planned auctions

Recent Developments

• Trump Executive Order pause (January 2025): On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order directing a halt to new offshore wind lease sales and directing DOI and BOEM to review all existing offshore wind leases, permits, and approvals. The order directed BOEM to pause reviewing new and pending permits, right-of-way grants, and leases while the review was conducted. Dozens of offshore wind projects in various stages of permitting were affected.
• Vineyard Wind blade failures (2024): Vineyard Wind, the first large-scale U.S. offshore wind farm (800 MW, off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts), suffered turbine blade failures during initial operations. The project suspended turbine installation and faced significant delays. The failures raised questions about the durability of the turbines in U.S. Atlantic ocean conditions and became a focal point for opponents of the offshore wind program.
• Project cancellations and restructuring: Several large offshore wind projects announced before the Trump pause had already been struggling with higher costs, supply chain challenges, and renegotiated power purchase agreements. Developers including Equinor, BP, and others cancelled or delayed projects. The Trump pause compounded financial pressure on developers who had paid large lease auction prices expecting project approval timelines.
• State-federal tension: States with large offshore wind targets — Massachusetts (10.4 GW by 2035), New York (9 GW by 2035), New Jersey (11 GW by 2040) — challenged the federal pause, arguing it conflicts with state renewable energy laws and contractual obligations. The conflict set up likely litigation over whether the executive pause exceeds BOEM's statutory authority under OCS Lands Act § 8(p).
• Gulf of Mexico wind: BOEM had begun expanding the offshore wind program beyond the Atlantic coast. Gulf of Mexico lease areas identified under the Biden administration faced the most uncertainty under the Trump review, given the Gulf's competing oil and gas priorities.

Pending Action

The Trump administration's January 2025 executive order pausing offshore wind leasing is the central pending action in this area. State governments (particularly Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey) and developers with existing leases have filed legal challenges arguing the executive pause conflicts with the OCS Lands Act's statutory mandate to manage offshore resources for "orderly development." Watch the D.C. Circuit and relevant federal district courts for injunctive relief proceedings. Congress may face pressure to pass legislation either codifying restrictions on offshore wind or clarifying BOEM's statutory obligation to process existing lease applications — given the billions in lease auction revenue already collected and the state-level renewable energy mandates that depend on offshore wind delivery.