The first major offshore wind project in the United States is complete.
South Fork Wind’s 12 turbines are spinning and sending power to the New York electric grid, the project’s developers announced today.
The announcement marks a win for the Biden administration and New York officials, who are banking on offshore wind projects built along the coast to generate large quantities of carbon-free electricity needed to combat climate change. Its completion follows a protracted legal and political battle, which saw a concerted effort by the cosmetics billionaire Ron Lauder to sink the project, and comes on the heels of a year that saw the offshore wind industry rocked by supply chain bottlenecks and rampant inflation.
“South Fork Wind is about the birth of offshore wind at scale,” said Jennifer Garvey, who helped spearhead development of the project for the Danish developer Ørsted. “People really recognized this as a trailblazing project that needed to succeed, that it was a harbinger for the industry and all of the clean energy opportunity that people wanted to see be realized.”