Construction to begin soon on new US offshore wind farm

Construction will soon begin on the second commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project to gain approval in the United States, the developers said.

The U.S. Department of the Interior approved it in November, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued its approval letter for the constructions and operations plan Tuesday, a major step in the federal process before construction can start.

Orsted, a Danish energy company, is developing the South Fork Wind project with utility Eversource off the coasts of New York and Rhode Island. They now expect the work onshore to begin by early February and offshore next year for as many as 12 turbines.

President Joe Biden has set a goal to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, generating enough electricity to power more than 10 million homes. In November, work began on the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States, the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts.

Those developments, along with last week's announcement that the Biden administration will hold its first offshore wind auction next month, show there's a lot of excitement, energy and progress in the U.S. offshore wind industry, said David Hardy, CEO of Orsted Offshore North America.

The auction is for nearly 500,000 acres off the coast of New York and New Jersey for wind energy projects that could produce enough electricity to power nearly 2 million homes.

“There's a lot of activity, at the same time it’s still a nascent industry," Hardy said Tuesday. “So there are still a lot of unknowns and a lot of risk, quite frankly, to getting this started and getting it right and in achieving the full opportunities of the industry.”

The offshore wind industry is far more advanced in Europe, where the first offshore wind farm...