The provisional winners of today’s auction for the New Jersey offshore wind lease area are RES America Developments Inc. and US Wind Inc., the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) reported on its official website.
The area was auctioned as two leases: the South Lease Area, covering 160,480 acres, and the North Lease Area, which consists of 183,353 acres.
After seven rounds, RES won by bidding USD 880,715 (approx. EUR 818,432) for the southern lease, while US Wind secured the northern lease with USD 1,006,240 (approx. EUR 935,080).
Even though thirteen companies were eligible to participate in the lease sale, only three were bidding for development rights to construct wind farms off New Jersey, with Fishermen’s Energy being the third bidder.
Each lease will have a preliminary term of one year, during which the lessee will submit a Site Assessment Plan to BOEM for approval. Once a Site Assessment Plan is approved, the lessee will have four and a half years to submit a Construction and Operations Plan (COP) to BOEM for approval. This plan provides detailed information for the construction and operation of a wind energy project on the lease. Once BOEM receives a COP from a lessee, it will conduct an environmental review of that proposed project. If the COP is approved, the lessee will have an operations term of 25 years, the U.S. Department of Energy explained in a press release issued after the auction.
The New Jersey wind energy area begins about 7 nautical miles (approx. 13km) offshore and extends roughly 21 nm (approx. 39km) seaward. It has an offshore wind energy capacity of at least 3.4GW, which is enough to power an estimated 1.2 million homes, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
USD 1=EUR 0.93
Offshore WIND Staff; Image: BOEM