The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is due to receive comments on its draft environmental impact statement for oil and gas decommissioning activities on the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf. BSEE and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management prepared the draft programmatic environmental review to inform BSEE’s future decisions on operator applications to decommission oil and gas platforms and associated infrastructure off the Southern California coast. The draft details four possible alternatives ranging from complete removal of the oil and gas platforms to a no action alternative.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is due to issue a final decision on a proposed oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. The 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program includes one proposed lease sale in the northern portion of the planning area, designated as Lease Sale 258. The proposed lease sale area consists of 224 lease blocks and covers about 1.09 million acres located offshore Alaska in in the northern portion of Cook Inlet. The bureau has issued a final environmental review, which will inform the process for lease sale, which is required to be held by the end this year, as directed in the Inflation Reduction Act enacted in August. The agency’s preferred alternative would offer 193 unleased blocks in the lease sale area, and combines two critical habitat exclusion alternatives.

The U.S. Energy Department is due to receive comments on the Energy Improvement in Rural or Remote Areas program established by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The law allocated $1 billion for the program to improve energy resilience and reliability, as well as environmental protection from adverse impacts of energy generation, in rural or remote areas with fewer than 10,000 people. The department recently held workshops to gather input on how demonstration projects can improve the resilience, safety, reliability, availability, and environmental performance of rural and remote energy systems across the U.S.

The U.S. Energy Department will hold a public webinar on the $10.5 billion Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership, or GRIP, program designed to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather and climate change. The initiative, funded by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes three financing mechanisms: Grid Resilience Utility and Industry Formula Grants, Smart Grid Grant Program, and the Grid Innovation Program. The department has announced $3.8 billion for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 in the first round of funding under the program.

The U.S. Energy Department is due to receive applications in response to its $40 million funding opportunity announcement for advancing clean hydrogen technologies and a $20 million university consortium funding to support grid resilience programs. The funding will advance the department’s Hydrogen Shot goal of reducing the price of clean hydrogen by 80 percent to $1 per kilogram within this decade and support the H2@Scale initiative that aims to facilitate utilization of clean hydrogen to enable decarbonization and revenue opportunities across multiple sectors. The initiative will provide three-year funding for a regionally diverse university consortium to support decarbonization and resilience of the electrical power system in coordination with universities in Mexico and Canada.