Biden Administration Approves Eighth US Offshore Wind Project

The U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday approved the country's eighth commercial-scale offshore wind project, which will be built off the coast of Massachusetts, bringing online electricity to power more than 900,000 homes.

The approval for Avangrid’s New England Wind Project brings the U.S. one-third of the way to President Joe Biden's goal of permitting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030—a key part of the president's climate change agenda.

The project comes just a week after the Interior Department approved another offshore wind project, Orsted's Sunrise Wind, in New York. The approvals this year follow a series of attempts by companies including Equinor, BP, Avangrid and Shell, to cancel or seek to renegotiate power contracts for commercial-scale U.S. wind farms due to supply chain concerns and high materials costs.

“The Biden-Harris administration has built an offshore wind industry from the ground up after years of delay from the previous administration," said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

New England Wind, representing two projects—the 791-megawatt (MW) New England Wind 1 project and 1,080 MW New England Wind 2 project—is located around 20 nautical miles south of the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard.

Avangrid, part of the Iberdrola Group, has submitted multiple proposals for the projects to the Massachusetts-Connecticut-Rhode Island multi-state solicitation for offshore wind power.

If successfully awarded, Avangrid has said it plans to utilize the newly constructed Foss Marine Terminal for a Construction Logistics Hub where all crew transfers will take place, using a purpose-built service operations vessel (SOV) by Edison Chouest Offshore and two crew transfer vessels (CTV), including one purpose-built locally for the project, operated by Patriot Offshore Maritime Services.

(Reuters - Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by David Gregorio, MarineLink staff)