March 20, 2024 — Opening a new frontier in the region’s offshore wind power push, the federal government on Friday finalized its designation of a two million-acre wind energy area off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the designated Gulf of Maine area would support President Joe Biden’s goals of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035.
The area, which ranges from 23 to 92 miles off the coasts of the three states, has the potential to support generation of 32 gigawatts of clean energy, the bureau said. That amount of energy surpasses “current state goals for offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine: 10 GW for Massachusetts and 3 GW for Maine,” BOEM said.