May 2, 2024 — The federal government is proposing eight areas in the Gulf of Maine as possible sites for commercial offshore wind farms.
The proposed lease areas cover about 1 million acres and have the potential to generate 15 gigawatts of energy, enough to power five million homes, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said Tuesday.
Two of the sites, encompassing nearly 254,000 acres, are off the Maine coast. The remaining six are located off Massachusetts.
In choosing the lease sites, BOEM said it wanted to avoid offshore fishing grounds and transit routes for ships. The eight proposed sites represent about half of the 2 million acres that BOEM chose as its “final wind energy area” for the Gulf of Maine, which the agency announced last month.