First-ever California offshore wind auction surpasses $757 million in bids

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced more than $757 million in winning bids for its auction of offshore wind development rights in California, marking the third offshore wind lease sale this year and the first ever for the Pacific region.

The sale is a major milestone in the administration’s goal of building offshore wind turbines across the nation’s coastlines to help power communities and transition to clean energy. The White House, as part of its broader agenda to address climate change, has committed to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. 

This week’s auction will also allow for investments in floating turbines, an emerging technology necessary to provide power when coastal waters are too deep for standard turbines to be fixed into the ocean floor. Such technology has so far been implemented in small-scale pilot projects in Europe...more