The US Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM) has resumed the auction for commercial wind energy leasing offshore Massachusetts.
The auction is offering three offshore wind energy lease areas covering nearly 390,000 acres which, if fully built out, could support around 4.1GW of offshore wind capacity.
After 32 bidding rounds, BOEM’s asking price for the third lease site, Lease OCS-A 0522, was USD 140 million and had no bidders agreeing to the asking price. The other two lease sites stood at USD 135 million and one developer in for each of the two sites. Following the 32nd round, BOEM announced that the auction had closed with the final information to be reported soon.
. @BOEM_DOI closes #Massachusetts #offshorewind auction after 32 rounds and around USD 400 million in winning bids. More info to follow soon. Stay tuned! #offshore #windenergy #USA #renewableenergy pic.twitter.com/vcy2yikPcD
— Offshore WIND (@OffshoreWINDbiz) December 14, 2018
Nineteen companies had previously qualified to participate in the Atlantic Wind Lease Sale 4A. The companies are Avangrid Renewables, Camellia Wind Energy, CI III Blue Cloud Wind Energy II, Cobra Industrial Services, Deepwater Wind New England, East Wind, EC&R Development, EDF Renewables Development, EDPR Offshore North America, Enbridge Holdings (Green Energy), Innogy US Renewable Projects, Mayflower Wind Energy, Northeast Wind Energy, Northland Power America, PNE Wind USA, Equinor Wind US, Vineyard Wind, Wind Future, and wpd offshore Alpha.
The three leases offered in the auction are located within the two lease blocks for which Equinor (formerly Statoil) and PNE Wind had separately submitted unsolicited lease requests in late 2016 and early 2017.
This is the nation’s 8th offshore wind auction.
Adnan Duraković and Adrijana Buljan, Offshore WIND Staff