December 8, 2021 — Renewable-energy developers preparing to build in East Coast waters are jockeying for space to plug their power into the grid, raising concerns that a lack of transmission lines could threaten the Biden administration’s goal of powering 10 million homes with offshore wind by 2030.
A flurry of proposed development aims to turn the waters from Massachusetts to the Carolinas into a hub of offshore wind energy, starting with the New York Bight—a strip of water between Long Island and the New Jersey coast that could send power to multiple state and regional jurisdictions.
The Interior Department early next year will lease up to 800,000 acres in the New York Bight, “the starting gun for a lot of activity, including a lot of transmission planning,” said Ted Boling, a partner at Perkins Coie LLP who served as the top lawyer for the White House Council of Environmental Quality in the Trump administration.
“There’s clearly a significant cost to do anything offshore, and particularly to develop a backbone transmission line,” Boling said. “That’s not going to happen until the costs are all figured out.”