Amanda Lefton, the former director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), went to work for a major offshore wind company after the agency boosted the industry and worked to limit offshore fossil fuel development on her watch.
Lefton spearheaded the Biden administration’s effort to build out 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity along America’s coasts by 2030 in her capacity as the leader of BOEM, playing a key role in the administration’s all-of-government offshore wind push from February 2021 to February 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile. She then went to work on green energy-related issues for Foley Hoag LLC — a major D.C. law firm — for approximately six months and then joined RWE, a major player in the offshore wind space, as the head of development for the east coast in July 2023.
“This is hardly surprising given the incestuous relations between the Biden BOEM and the wind industry. On Ms. Lefton’s watch the agency helped rush the so-far disastrous Vineyard Wind project through. BOEM even waived the financial assurance requirements intended to protect the taxpayers from the costs of decommissioning the project when complete (while, in the Gulf, it was modifying those same requirements in an attempt to drive small oil and gas companies out of business),” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Former Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau, her boss during most of her tenure at BOEM, had previously represented Vineyard Wind. This revolving door has been spinning everywhere the Biden administration and the climate sector meet. The players remain the same, the only thing that changes is who signs the paychecks.”
RWE is headquartered in Germany, but it has offices in New York City and other American cities. The company became the largest offshore wind leaseholder in the New York Bight lease area in 2022, the same year it won a lease for floating offshore wind development off the coast of Northern California.
“RWE abides by all conflict-of-interest laws and regulations,” a RWE spokesperson told the DCNF when reached for comment on behalf of Lefton. The company did not address questions about Lefton’s compensation or whether her intimate knowledge of BOEM played any role in the firm’s decision to hire her.
Sam Eaton, the CEO of RWE Offshore Holdings, praised Lefton’s “know-how navigating all levels of government” that helped lead to approvals for two major offshore wind farms in her tenure at BOEM in a statement addressing her hiring.
As Chamberlain noted in his statement, Lefton ran BOEM when the agency greenlit the massive Vineyard Wind development off the coast of Nantucket in May 2021. Lefton said at the time that the Vineyard Wind approval “represents the power of a government-wide approach to offshore wind permitting, taking stakeholder ideas and concerns into consideration every step of the way.”
However, Vineyard Wind later became the subject of controversy when one of the development’s turbine blades malfunctioned, fractured and fell into the Atlantic. The resulting debris floated its way to nearby beaches, forcing their closure as workers cleared the pollution and enraging locals.
Moreover, BOEM finalized the most restrictive five-year schedule for oil and gas leasing in modern U.S history in December 2023. While Lefton was no longer running the agency at that point in time, BOEM published the schedule approximately 500 days late, meaning that the agency was dragging its feet on the oil and gas leasing schedule while Lefton was in charge of BOEM.
Lefton is also an on-the-record opponent of the continued long-term use of fossil fuels, telling E&E News in May 2022 that “we have to transition to clean renewable energy in order to fight climate change” and that she favors policies like incorporating climate costs into oil and gas leasing analyses and making use of the social cost of carbon metric. The outlet later reported on Jan. 24 that Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering nominating Lefton to run the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
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