The New York Bight offshore wind lease auction is already the most successful in U.S. history.
And it isn't over.
After one day and 21 rounds of live bidding, the combined price set for the six areas off New York and New Jersey was $1.53 billion, as of Feb. 23.
The price for OCS-A 0539 (purple in the graphic below) was set at $410 million with five bidders still involved at the end of the first day. That price tag tops the previous U.S. record for an individual offshore wind lease sale ($135.1 million) and overall lease auction ($405 million) that was set in 2018 for three areas off Massachusetts.
You can find results from the first 21 rounds of bidding here.
The auction was set to resume on Feb. 24. Follow this story throughout the day for the results.
How the auction works
Heading into the New York Bight lease auction, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) identified 25 pre-qualified bidders. The list included Avangrid Renewables, BP US Offshore Wind Energy, US Wind, and EDF Renewables. A notable player in the global offshore wind industry, Ørsted, was not listed, though auction rules allow companies to bid through affiliated partners.
As long as there are two or more live bids (including bids carried forward) for at least one of the Lease Areas, the auction moves to the next round. In order to participate in the next round of the auction, a bidder must have submitted a live bid for one of the lease areas in the previous round, or BOEM must have carried over a bidder's bid from a previous round.
Under auction rules, BOEM raises the asking price for each of the Lease Areas that has received two or more live bids in the previous round.
A bidder may switch its live bid from one Lease Area to another between rounds, but only if its bid from the previous round was contested.
BOEM said it planned to announce the provisional winning bidders soon after the end of the auction.
Join us on April 13th for the next edition of the Renewable +Series on offshore wind. Developers, advocates, and policymakers will discuss the future of offshore wind energy along the Pacific Coast. Register here.
What is New York Bight?
The New York Bight offshore wind lease auction is made up of 480,000 acres off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, which has been divided into six lease areas. New York Bight is the first offshore wind lease auction under the Biden administration and is the largest in U.S. history.
The expected installed capacity for the lease auction represented a combined 5.6 GW to 7 GW, enough to power 2 million homes.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland called the New York Bight offshore wind lease auction "an inflection point for domestic offshore wind energy development."
