The US Department of the Interior has announced that it would hold an offshore wind energy lease sale in the Central Atlantic during the summer.
The areas to be auctioned on August 14, 2024, by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could generate up to 6.3GW of renewable energy and power up to 2.2m homes.
The sale includes one area offshore Delaware and Maryland and one area offshore the Commonwealth of Virginia. Lease Area A-2 has a surface of around 410 sq km and is around 26 nautical miles from Delaware Bay. Lease Area C-1 consists of nearly 714.3 sq km and is some 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Seventeen companies qualified to participate in the August sale.
“We are excited to announce this sale and underscore our commitment to explore additional areas in the Central Atlantic for potential offshore wind energy development,” said BOEM director Elizabeth Klein.
Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of the Interior has approved the nation’s first eight commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects in federal waters.
BOEM has also held four offshore wind lease sales, including offshore New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas, and the first-ever sales off the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. The Department recently announced a schedule of up to 12 additional lease sales through 2028.
