US regulators next month will hold the first sale for offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will offer three offshore wind leases in the Gulf at the 29 August auction, the agency said today. The areas collectively span almost 302,000 acres and could host around 3,700MW, enough capacity to power the equivalent of about 1.3mn households.
The sale will feature a roughly 102,500-acre area near Lake Charles, Louisiana, and another two regions covering around 97,000 and 102,500 acres near Galveston, Texas. The wind lease areas are the same as those proposed by the agency earlier this year.
The agency has approved 15 companies to participate in the auction. The list includes several with projects in the works along the east coast, including Connecticut-based utility and developer Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish power company Iberdrola; developer Bluepoint Wind, a collaboration between Spanish company EDP Renewables, French utility Engie and New York investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners; Norwegian company Equinor; TotalEnergies; and Shell.
Other potential bidders include Houston-based clean energy investment platform 547 Energy and South Korean conglomerate Hanwha.
Each bidder must deposit $2mn by 13 August to participate, and BOEM will set the minimum bid price at $50/acre. Participants may also receive "bidding credits" worth 10-30pc of the cash bid for committing to workforce training programs, steps to build out the domestic offshore supply chain, funding to mitigate impacts to fisheries from developing wind farms, or some combination of those initiatives.
The Gulf coast would be the third US coastal area to potentially host offshore wind farms. The sector's pipeline is dominated by projects on the east coast, and BOEM in December held its first offshore lease sale for the west coast as California pursues 2,000-5,000MW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and 25,000MW by 2045.
The administration of President Joe Biden is attempting to build out 30,000MW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 in pursuit of a zero-emissions grid by 2035.
