UPDATE(Dec. 16, 1:34 pm EST):The intense bidding is finally over! After a marathon session that spilled into a second day, and 33 rounds (!) of bidding, thewinner of the New York offshore wind area leaseis Statoil Wind US. The $42.5 million winning price is by far the highest amount paid in any of the dozen auctions to date, and a real vote of confidence in the future of offshore wind in the US. Exciting times indeed.
It’s been quite a week for offshore wind in the US—new leases, new deals, and the first-ever offshore wind electrons in the Western Hemisphere.
The first-ever offshore wind project in the Americas officially turns on.
The week kicked off with the first-ever offshore wind project anywhere in the Americas getting the go-ahead to start delivering energy to Block Island (RI) and beyond, andofficially turning on.
TheBlock Island Wind Project‘s five turbines are the vanguard of an amazing revolution in renewable energy in the Northeast and beyond—jobs, economic development, carbon-free energy, and a whole new way of getting the power we need to run the region’s homes and businesses. (Turn, baby, turn!)
There’s offshore wind action in Massachusetts.
The week’s offshore wind oomph continued with an announcement yesterday that Eversource, a local electricity and gas utility in several New England states, had signed on to get a piece of offshore wind action in the region.
Eversource hasbought a 50-percent stakein a venture owned by the Danish company DONG. Bay State Wind, as it’s known, holdsone of the offshore wind leasesoff Massachusetts’s south coast—enough area, they say, to power at least one million Massachusetts homes.
Thanks to theMassachusetts energy lawfrom this past summer that will drive Massachusetts utilities to buy offshore wind, we’ll need all that, and much more.
我在海上风力最大的一个奖项s up for auction. Right now.
And even as I write this, I keep hitting the refresh button to watch a host ofoffshore wind bidders competingfor one of the biggest prizes to be had: New York. BOEM, the US government agency responsible for managing our coastal areas (the Outer Continental Shelf) that will host future offshore wind projects, is conducting an auction on severallease areas south of Long Island, and close to New York City. A new round of bidding is happening every 20 minutes, and so far no bidders have dropped out.
So stay tuned. I can’t guarantee that every week is going to be this exciting in the world of US offshore wind. But I can guarantee that the next few years of offshore wind activity are going to be well worth keeping an eye on.
For more of a taste of the excitement around the Block Island project, check out what theNational Wildlife Federation,Conservation Law Foundation,Environment America, and theNatural Resources Defense Councileach had to say. People are pretty pumped.