The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has approved the 1,287MW SouthCoast offshore wind project off New England. The project’s construction and operations plan still needs to be approved.
This comes with just a month until the outlook for US offshore wind is expected to change for the worse when the anti-wind Donald Trump becomes president.
Trump has said he will stop offshore wind on “day one”. He can likely slow down federal approval of new projects.
Meanwhile, the administration of the outgoing president, the pro-wind Joe Biden, appears to be rushing to issue decisions favourable to the sector before the presidential inauguration day on 20 January.
“The approval of the SouthCoast Wind project today demonstrates the strength of our collaborative process to deploy offshore wind,” said BOEM director Elizabeth Klein.
SouthCoast is developed by Ocean Winds North America, a joint venture of EDP Renewables and Engie.
In September, Massachusetts and Rhode Island awarded contracts that will see the states buy output from nearly 2.9GW of capacity in the US’s first ever multi-state offshore wind power auction. One of the winners was SouthCoast.
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