BOEM Receives Lease Requests for Offshore Wind
14 Mar 2017 BOEM has received unsolicited lease requests from two companies seeking to develop offshore wind energy on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). These requests are for areas located offshore New York and Massachusetts and are not in response to a formal call for interest. BOEM has finished its review of the unsolicited lease requests and deemed the requests complete. Moreover, BOEM has reviewed the applicants' qualification materials and determined that the applicant
California has a new $383 million plan for the shrinking Salton Sea
After years of delays, California’s plans for the shrinking Salton Sea are finally starting to take shape. A $383 million plan released by the state’s Natural Resources Agency on Thursday lays out a schedule for building thousands of acres of ponds and wetlands that will cover up stretches of dusty lakebed and create habitat for birds as the lake recedes. The state’s blueprint focuses on constructing a patchwork of ponds that will spread out along the lake’s north and south s


Feds to lease area off Outer Banks for commercial wind farm
KITTY HAWK, N.C. — The federal government plans to lease nearly 200 square miles of ocean off the Outer Banks for a commercial wind farm.The Department of the Interior announced the March auction on Tuesday and named nine companies it deems qualified to bid on the wind energy project. "This is a significant milestone for North Carolina and our country as we continue to make progress on diversifying our nation’s energy portfolio," Walter Cruickshank, acting director of the Bur

Owners to vote on fate of Navajo coal plant in northern Arizona
The owners of the Navajo Generating Station coal-fired power plant near Page will vote Monday on whether to shut the plant down this year or try to keep it running at least through 2019, officials said Tuesday. The plant has faced a variety of environmental challenges through the years, but now is jeopardized by the fact that natural-gas-fired power plants generate electricity at a lower cost. The owners, led by Salt River Project, are considering a shutdown, rather than exte


Salton Sea geothermal plant would use lithium tech that caught Tesla's eye
After years of false starts and disappointments, the Salton Sea lithium story may get a happy ending after all. The next few months will be crucial. To recap: In 2014, Elon Musk's Tesla Motors offered $325 million to buy Simbol Materials, a clean-tech startup that had developed technology to extract lithium — a key ingredient in electric car batteries — from the geothermal brine by the southern shore of the Salton Sea, in California's Imperial Valley. But the deal fell apart,

