Feds Approve Construction, Operations Plan for Offshore Wind Farm
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators on Friday gave their final approval to the construction and operation of a large-scale wind farm off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Once completed, the Sunrise Wind project, a joint effort of developers Ørsted and Con Ed Transmission, will have a total capacity of 924 MW — roughly enough energy to power more than 320,000 homes for one year.
The developers have said the project will support more than 800 direct jobs each year during the construction phase and about 300 jobs annually during the operations phase.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s final approval Friday comes three months after the Interior Department released its record of decision on the project.
“BOEM’s approval of the Sunrise Wind project represents another step in building a thriving offshore wind energy industry,” said agency director Elizabeth Klein in a written statement.
Since the start of the Biden administration, the Interior Department has approved eight commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects in federal waters with a combined capacity of more than 10 GW of clean energy. That’s enough to power nearly 4 million homes.
During the same period, BOEM has held four offshore wind lease auctions, including sales in the New York-New Jersey region, offshore the Carolinas and the first-ever sales offshore in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.
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