Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Interior Department is
planning the nation’s largest competitive auction for offshore
wind projects, 742,000 acres off Massachusetts that may generate
as much as 5 gigawatts of electricity.
The area will be divided into four zones and may produce
enough power for 1.4 million homes, the department said today in
an e-mailed statement. Twelve companies, including Fishermen’s
Energy LLC, Deepwater Wind LLC and Iberdrola SA, are qualified
to bid on the areas about 14 miles off the coast. The auction is
scheduled for Jan. 29.
“This sale will triple the amount of federal offshore
acreage available for commercial-scale wind-energy projects,”
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in the statement.
The department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has
awarded seven leases — two through non-competitive bids — for
projects in the Atlantic Ocean, including Cape Wind in Nantucket
Sound. Five competitive sales for more than 357,000 acres off
Maryland, Virginia and New England have generated more than $14
million.
BOEM in 2015 plans to hold another competitive auction for
lease areas off the coast of New Jersey, where last week the
state’s Board of Utilities rejected a proposal for a wind farm
near Atlantic City.
The U.S. has no utility-scale offshore wind installations,
and development has lagged elsewhere, including in China.
Offshore wind energy costs about twice as much to produce as
power from coal, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New
Energy Finance.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Mark Drajem in Washington at
Justin Doom in New York at
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Jon Morgan at
Reed Landberg at
Will Wade, Jim Efstathiou Jr.