The Biden administration is moving closer to a final approval of Vineyard Wind LLC’s $2.8 billion offshore wind farm planned near the coast of Massachusetts. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is has published a favorable final environmental review of the 800-megawatt project. The project could be formally authorized as soon as April. The venture is poised to become the first major offshore wind farm in federal waters. President Joe Biden, who is aggressively pursuing a clean-energy agenda, signed an executive order to double wind generation in U.S. waters by 2030. The Vineyard project alone would satisfy that commitment. The project is a joint venture of Avangrid Inc. and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, and would ship power to Massachusetts and have enough capacity to supply about 400,000 homes. Expected to go into service in late 2023, it would be the first of several massive wind farms planned off the East Coast, as states such as Massachusetts, New York, Maine and New Jersey count on power from offshore renewable projects to help them satisfy clean-energy mandates.
