The Biden administration scooped $93 million from offshore wind developers Wednesday in a sale off the coast of Delaware and Virginia, striking a bullish note for President Joe Biden’s offshore wind legacy despite the industry’s economic headwinds.
Just two leases were up for bid in the central Atlantic sale. A wind lease off the coast of Delaware netted $75 million, from the Norwegian energy giant Equinor, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s preliminary results.
A second lease area, off the coast of Virginia Beach, was scooped up for almost $18 million by the Richmond-based utility Dominion Energy. Dominion was the sole bidder for that lease, which lies adjacent to the 176-turbine Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farm that Dominion is currently building.
The sale, likely one of the last auctions of Biden’s pro-wind era, cinches developer’s continued interest in investing in the U.S. despite a year of severe economic headwinds, bad press — a broken turbine blade at an offshore wind farm in Massachusetts has bruised the young industry’s reputation and a Gulf of Mexico sale planned by the Biden administration was scrapped last month due to lack of industry interest.
