U.S. Offshore Wind Auction Bids Top $1.5B, Gov't Says

The largest-ever US sale of offshore wind development rights - for areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey - attracted a record $1.5 billion in bids on Wednesday as President Joe Biden pushes his plan to create a new domestic industry, Nichola Groom reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: The bidding easily topped the US offshore wind auction record of $405 million set in 2018.

The auction, which will continue on Thursday, is the first offshore wind lease sale under Biden, who has made expansion of offshore wind a cornerstone of his plans to tackle global warming and decarbonize the US electricity grid by 2035 while creating tens of thousands of jobs.

After 21 rounds of bidding, combined live bids for the six leases stood at nearly $1.54 billion, according to updates posted on the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) website.

That easily topped the US offshore wind auction record of $405 million set in 2018. It was also far more than recent oil and gas auctions in US federal waters. A sale of drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico late last year, for instance, attracted $191.7 million in high bids.

BOEM said 14 companies took part in the auction. The website did not identify the companies competing for the leases but approved bidders included entities controlled by Equinor ASA, Avangrid Inc., BP Plc, and Eletricite de France SA (EDF), government documents published last month showed.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic