Offshore

Duke, TotalEnergies announced as provisional winners of Carolinas offshore wind lease auction

Duke, TotalEnergies announced as provisional winners of Carolinas offshore wind lease auction
FILE - Two of the offshore wind turbines which have been constructed off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. are seen on Monday, June 29, 2020. As Virginia-based Dominion Energy seeks to build what it calls the country’s largest offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean, the company and its supporters have touted the economic development opportunities expected to accompany the 176-turbine project. But state regulators say the economic picture might not be so rosy. In testimony filed earlier this month, regulators said the company relied on a “stale” economic study that didn’t account for the impact of its Virginia ratepayers bearing the cost of the approximately $10 billion project. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

A lease auction for the rights to develop offshore wind off the coast of the Carolinas brought in $315 million combined.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held the Carolina Long Bay lease auction on May 11. TotalEnergies had the highest bid for OCS-A 0545 at $160 million and Duke Energy is the provisional winner of OCS-A 0546.

Carolina Long Bay offshore wind lease areas (Source: BOEM)

The timing of the Carolina Long offshore wind energy auction is intentional: Beginning July 1, a 10-year moratorium signed by former President Donald Trump will ban offshore wind leasing in the area stretching from North Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico, ending at the Florida Keys.

The lease areas include 110,091 acres in the Carolina Long Bay area offshore North Carolina and South Carolina. If developed, they could result in at least 1.3 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, enough to power nearly 500,000 homes.   

BOEM issued the Final Sale Notice (FSN) for the Wilmington East Wind Energy Area on March 25. Qualified offshore wind developers were able to bid on the rights to develop one or both of the lease areas.

As part of the FSN, BOEM is offering 20% credit to bidders that invest in programs to advance U.S. offshore wind energy workforce development and supply chain development. The Department of Energy expects that offshore wind development in the U.S. could create 43,000 jobs by 2030 to support the Biden administration's goal of developing 30 GW of offshore wind.

"The Biden-Harris administration is committed to supporting a robust clean energy economy, and the upcoming Carolina Long Bay offshore wind energy auction provides yet another excellent opportunity to strengthen the clean energy industry while creating good-paying union jobs,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

BOEM had pre-approved 16 companies to bid on the Carolina Long Bay offshore wind leases.

The companies are 547 Energy, Arevia Power, Avangrid Renewables, bp, Invenergy, Carolina Offshore Wind, Duke Energy, EDF Renewables, JERA Renewables, Masdar Offshore Wind, MRP Offshore Wind Farm, Ørsted, Ocean Winds, RWE, Shell, and TotalEnergies.

Renewable Energy World will update this story once the lease auction concludes.