The federal Department of the Interior announced on Friday the results of the New York Bight offshore wind sale, the nation’s highest-grossing competitive offshore energy lease sale in history.
The sale, held on Feb. 23, offered six lease areas totaling more than 488,000 acres in the New York Bight, a portion of the Atlantic Ocean off New York and New Jersey, for potential wind energy development. It drew competitive winning bids from six companies totaling approximately $4.37 billion.
The results “are a major milestone toward achieving the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030,” according to the Interior Department.
Bight Wind Holdings, a joint venture between RWE of Germany and National Grid of Britain, was the highest bidder at $1.1 billion for a 126,000-acre site. Attentive Energy, a joint venture between German and French firms, bid $795 million for an 84,332-acre parcel. Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Bight, a joint partnership between Shell New Energies US and EDF Renewables North America, both subsidiaries of European energy companies, bid $780 million for a 79,351-acre site. The companies are also behind Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind, which bid $285 million for a 43,056-acre parcel.
Ocean Winds East, a joint venture between Spanish and French companies, bid $765 million for a 71,522-acre site. And Invenergy Wind Offshore, a joint venture of the American companies Invenergy and EnergyRe, bid $645 million for 83,976 acres in the Bight.
In a post on its website, the Interior Department cited an October report issued by the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent research organization, which concluded that the United States’ offshore wind energy industry presents a $109 billion revenue opportunity to businesses in the supply chain over the next decade.
Also on the Interior Department’s website is a statement from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who was in East Hampton Town on Feb. 11 for the ceremonial groundbreaking for the South Fork Wind farm, the state’s first offshore wind farm. “This week’s offshore wind sale makes one thing clear: The enthusiasm for the clean energy economy is undeniable and it’s here to stay,” she said. “The investments we are seeing today will play an important role in delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation.”
The federal Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission will conduct an anticompetitiveness review of the auction before the leases are finalized, with provisional winners required to pay the winning bids and provide financial assurance to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
