President Joe Biden has tapped New York’s energy secretary Amanda Lefton as the new director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The bureau will oversee the administration’s planned launch of US commercial-scale offshore wind farms. Developers have proposed several projects off the coast of Long Island and Connecticut.
Lefton served as first secretary for energy and the environment for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo since January 2019.
She played a prominent role under Cuomo in passing the 2019 Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act. The law addressed climate change by transitioning the state to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.