The Biden administration approved a New York offshore wind project Thursday that could power more than 1 million homes in the state if the developer also wins a state contract to pay for the electricity.
The Interior Department decision is a final green light for Equinor’s two-part Empire Wind project and brings the administration nearly halfway to its goal to advance 16 offshore wind arrays by 2025.
Empire Wind, which completed an environmental review with the Biden administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in November, is the sixth offshore wind project approved since President Joe Biden took office. The project consists of the 810-megawatt Empire Wind 1 and the 1,260-MW Empire Wind 2 farms.
The president has called for installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030. The industry has been hampered in recent months by inflationary costs and a fledgling domestic supply chain as offshore wind manufacturers, laborers and installation ships are not yet ready for a boom in construction.
