The Interior Department announced the approval Tuesday of a new commercial-scale offshore wind project in Massachusetts, clearing the way for up to 2.6 gigawatts of offshore wind power to be added to the power grid and moving the Biden administration one-third of the way to its target of 30 GW for offshore wind.
The Avangrid-owned New England Wind Project will be built roughly 20 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Interior Department officials said in a statement Tuesday. Once online, it is expected to generate enough wind power to supply more than 900,000 homes.
The New England Wind Project is the eighth commercial-scale offshore wind project to be approved under President Joe Biden. Biden also pledged to approve 16 offshore wind projects by 2025 in an effort to deliver on its goals by 2030.
With the approval of the New England Wind Project, Biden’s total approved offshore wind capacity now stands at 10 GW, Interior officials said — enough wind energy to power nearly 4 million homes.
“With the approval of the New England Wind project, we have now approved more than 10 GW of offshore wind projects in under three years,” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Elizabeth Klein told reporters.
The project approval comes just days after administration officials signed off last week on another large-scale offshore wind project in the Northeast: Sunrise Wind, an Orsted-owned wind development expected to bring nearly 1 GW of wind power to supply residents in New York.
The Biden administration has overseen billions of dollars in federal funding for offshore wind, primarily via the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated $369 billion for clean and renewable energy growth, including offshore wind. Last month, the administration also announced the expansion of certain tax credits for offshore wind under the legislation to allow more pathways for developers to qualify for subsidies.
The new project approvals are a shot in the arm for the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has struggled with a string of setbacks in recent months, including poorly negotiated power purchase agreements, supply chain delays, and higher-than-expected materials costs.
These headwinds forced some developers to renegotiate or abandon their stake in U.S. projects in recent months, threatening to put Biden’s 30 GW target out of reach.
Biden officials praised the offshore wind developments Tuesday as a major step forward for offshore wind, an industry that they said had been stalled for years under the Trump administration.
“The Biden-Harris administration has built an offshore wind industry from the ground up after years of delay from the previous administration,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
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“Today, we celebrate the incredible progress being made toward achieving our goal of 30 GW of offshore wind energy,” she said.
