The Biden/Harris administration announced the approval of the SouthCoast Wind Project, the nation’s 11th commercial-scale offshore wind energy project. With the approval, the department and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have approved more than 19 GW of clean energy from offshore wind energy projects, enough to power more than 6 million homes.
“When we walked in the door of this administration, there were zero approved, commercial-scale offshore wind projects in federal waters. Today, I am proud to celebrate our 11th approval, a testament to the commitment and enduring progress made by the hardworking public servants at the Department of the Interior,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. “With President Biden’s leadership through the Investing in America agenda, we are addressing the climate crisis, creating jobs, and building an enduring economy that supports all communities.”
“The approval of the SouthCoast Wind Project today demonstrates the strength of our collaborative process to deploy offshore wind,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. “To help inform our decisions, our environmental reviews continue to integrate leading scientific research with key insights from Tribal Nations, states, other government agencies, industry, environmental groups, and ocean users. As we mark this achievement, we look forward to the meaningful economic opportunities the SouthCoast Wind Project will bring to this region, both during construction and throughout the project's lifetime.”
In addition to the approval of the nation’s first 11 commercial-scale offshore wind projects, BOEM has held six offshore wind lease auctions since 2022, including a record-breaking sale offshore New York and the first-ever sales offshore the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and Gulf of Maine coasts.
The SouthCoast Wind Project is expected to generate up to 2.4 GW of offshore wind energy for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, enough to power more than 840,000 homes. The project area covers approximately 127,388 acres and about 26 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 20 nautical miles south of Nantucket, Mass (Fig. 1).
The project, as approved, includes the construction of up to 141 wind turbine generators and up to five offshore substation platforms at a maximum of 143 positions and up to eight offshore export cables potentially making landfall in Brayton Point or Falmouth, Mass. Compared with SouthCoast’s original proposed project, the selected alternative removes up to six wind turbine positions in the northeastern portion of the lease area to reduce potential effects on foraging habitat and potential displacement of wildlife from this habitat adjacent to Nantucket Shoals.