Louisiana voters want federal money from offshore wind to go toward coastal restoration

Louisiana voters approved an amendment asking them if revenues from offshore alternative energy should go towards coastal restoration and protection.

Federal money from offshore oil and gas production already goes into Louisiana’s Coastal Restoration and Protection Fund. “We’ve received hundreds of millions of dollars over the years because of that. What this amendment would do is basically the same,” Barry Erwin, president and CEO of Council for a Better Louisiana, told Louisiana Considered. 

Despite these oil and gas revenues flowing into the fund, the state doesn’t have enough money to fund its Coastal Master Plan. Amendment 1 sets up the state to receive slightly more.

The yes vote on the amendment means federal money from the emerging offshore alternative energy industry, which is primarily wind, will go into that same fund for the coast. A no vote would have put the money into the state’s general fund, which is spent how the legislature chooses.

There are no completed wind projects off of Louisiana’s Gulf coast yet. Two were granted leases by the state last December and are underway. The Danish firm Vestas – which operates under the name Cajun Wind in Louisiana – was granted nearly 60,000 acres off of Cameron Parish. Diamond Wind, which is owned by the Japanese company Mitsubishi, was granted a little over 6,000 acres of the coast of Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.

The federal government doesn’t share offshore alternative energy revenues with states, but some in Louisiana’s congressional delegation have been pushing for it. Sen. Bill Cassidy co-sponsored the Reinvesting in Shoreline Economies & Ecosystems (RISEE) Act and Rep. Steve Scalise sponsored the Budgeting for Renewable Electrical Energy Zone Earnings Act (BREEZE Act), both of which would bring revenues from offshore wind to states.

But Erwin said even if revenues start coming in, it won’t be very much money. Estimates put the amount at about 10 percent of what Louisiana gets from oil and gas, which is about $160 million a year. “We’re gonna be losing a lot of the coastal money that we’re getting right now when the BP oil payments are kind of finalized in a few years,” he said. “So I think the proponents feel like every dollar that we can still muster towards coastal protection.”