In support of the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has announced its approval of Sunrise Wind’s plan for construction and operations. This is the project’s final approval from BOEM, following the Department of the Interior’s March 2024 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 BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. 'The Biden-Harris administration continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing responsible projects like Sunrise Wind as part of our strategy to foster good paying jobs for local communities, ignite economic development, and fight the harmful effects of climate change.'
The Sunrise Wind project - to be located south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and east of Block Island, Rhode Island - will have a total capacity of 924-megawatts of clean, renewable energy that could power more than 320,000 homes per year. The project will support more than 800 direct jobs each year during the construction phase and about 300 jobs annually during the operations phase.
Bidenomics and the President’s Investing in America agenda are growing the American economy from the middle out and bottom up – from rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, to driving over half a trillion dollars in new private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments in the United States, to creating good-paying jobs and building a clean energy economy that will combat the climate crisis and make our communities more resilient.
During the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of the Interior has approved the first eight commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects in federal waters with a combined capacity of more than 10 gigawatts of clean energy—enough to power nearly 4 million homes. 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 the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.
BOEM received important feedback on the project’s potential environmental impacts through government-to-government consultations with Tribes, input from federal, state and local agencies, and from public meetings and comments.
For more information about the Sunrise Wind project and other offshore wind activities, visit BOEM’s website.
Source: BOEM
