A lease auction for the rights to develop offshore wind off the coast of the Carolinas is now underway.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management kicked off the Carolina Long Bacy lease auction at 9:00 a.m. EST on May 11, and by noon both areas up for lease had received highest bids of $31.5 million.
Carolina Long Bay offshore wind lease areas (Source: BOEM)The timing of the Carolina Long offshore wind energy auction is intentional: Beginning July 1, a 10-year moratorium signed by former President Donald Trump will ban offshore wind leasing in the area stretching from North Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico, ending at the Florida Keys.
The lease areas include 110,091 acres in the Carolina Long Bay area offshore North Carolina and South Carolina. If developed, they could result in at least 1.3 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, enough to power nearly 500,000 homes.
BOEM issued the Final Sale Notice (FSN) for the Wilmington East Wind Energy Area on March 25. Qualified offshore wind developers can bid on the rights to develop one or both of the lease areas.
As part of the FSN, BOEM is offering 20% credit to bidders that invest in programs to advance U.S. offshore wind energy workforce development and supply chain development. The Department of Energy expects that offshore wind development in the U.S. could create 43,000 jobs by 2030 to support the Biden administration's goal of developing 30 GW of offshore wind.
"The Biden-Harris administration is committed to supporting a robust clean energy economy, and the upcoming Carolina Long Bay offshore wind energy auction provides yet another excellent opportunity to strengthen the clean energy industry while creating good-paying union jobs,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
BOEM announced 16 companies that are pre-approved to bid on the Carolina Long Bay offshore wind leases.
The companies are 547 Energy, Arevia Power, Avangrid Renewables, bp, Invenergy, Carolina Offshore Wind, Duke Energy, EDF Renewables, JERA Renewables, Masdar Offshore Wind, MRP Offshore Wind Farm, Ørsted, Ocean Winds, RWE, Shell, and TotalEnergies.
Renewable Energy World will update this story once the lease auction concludes.
