The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced on Friday, June 21 its approval of Sunrise Wind’s plan for construction and operations. This is the project’s final approval from BOEM, following the Department of the Interior’s March 2024 Record of Decision.
“BOEM’s approval of the Sunrise Wind project represents another step in building a thriving offshore wind energy industry,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein in a press release. “The Biden-Harris administration continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing responsible projects like Sunrise Wind as part of our strategy to foster good paying jobs for local communities, ignite economic development, and fight the harmful effects of climate change.”
The Sunrise Wind project—located south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and east of Block Island, Rhode Island—will have a total capacity of 924 megawatts of clean, renewable energy that could power more than 320,000 homes annually. The project will support more than 800 direct jobs each year during construction and about 300 jobs annually during operations, according to officials.
View from Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Newport County, Rhode Island
During the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of the Interior has approved the first eight commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects in federal waters with a combined capacity of more than 10 gigawatts of clean energy—enough to power nearly 4 million homes. BOEM has held four offshore wind lease auctions, including sales in the New York New Jersey region, offshore the Carolinas, and the first-ever sales offshore the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.
BOEM received important feedback on the project’s potential environmental impacts through government-to-government consultations with Tribes, input from federal, state and local agencies, and from public meetings and comments.
For more information about the Sunrise Wind project and other offshore wind activities, visit BOEM’s website.
