Secretary of the Interior Department announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will run a wind auction for more than 480,000 acres off the coasts of New York and New Jersey in the New York Bight in February 2022. This marks the first offshore wind lease sale under the Biden-Harris administration.
The auction will take place on February 23, 2022 and allow offshore wind developers to bid on six lease areas. BOEM estimates that the leases offered in this sale could result in 5.6 to 7 GW of offshore wind energy. New York and New Jersey have established a goal of deploying over 16 GW of offshore wind by 2035, making it the nation’s largest regional offshore wind objective.
In November 2021, the US Department of Interior issued a Record of Decision for South Fork Wind, a 132 MW project that will be located 19 miles southeast of Block Island, Rhode Island. The project, which is the second commercial-scale offshore wind project to get government approval in the United States, is a collaboration between Ørsted and Eversource.
REGlobal’s Views: This offshore wind leasing round will help bring the United States closer to its target of 30 GW offshore wind by 2030.