Nation’s First Commercial-Scale Offshore Wind Project Completes Construction
Contact Information
Permitting Council Press Office (media@permittting.gov)
WASHINGTON (March 14, 2024) – Federal and state leaders gathered on Long Island, New York today to commemorate the completion of South Fork Wind, the first offshore wind project to obtain coverage from the Permitting Council’s FAST-41 program. The $740 million project is the first offshore wind project in New York state and is already playing a significant role in making the clean energy future a reality.
“This is a celebratory day for the Permitting Council, as we witness the first FAST-41 offshore wind project to complete the permitting process officially launch into full-scale operation,” says Eric Beightel, Permitting Council Executive Director. “Permitting offshore wind projects was a novel concept when this project first gained FAST-41 coverage, but our work to bring coordination, collaboration, and transparency to its permitting set up standards that are now helping over a dozen more offshore wind projects make their way through the federal permitting process. This work is making a difference in the Biden-Harris administration’s ambitious renewable energy goals, and we are just getting started.”
South Fork Wind is a 132-megawatt offshore wind farm consisting of 12 wind turbines located 19 miles southeast of Block Island, Rhode Island, and 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York. The project is a key component of the Permitting Council’s renewable energy portfolio, which now has a total of 15 offshore wind projects. The Council is the central coordinating body for permitting offshore wind energy in the U.S. and serves as a key implementing agent of the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030.
The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management led permitting review for the South Fork Wind project since it joined the FAST-41 program in August 2018. Learn more at Permitting.gov.
About the Permitting Council and FAST-41
Established in 2015 by Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41) and made permanent in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Permitting Council is a unique federal agency charged with improving the transparency and predictability of the federal environmental review and authorization process for certain critical infrastructure projects. The Permitting Council is comprised of the Permitting Council Executive Director, who serves as the Council Chair; 13 federal agency Council members (including deputy secretary-level designees of the Secretaries of Agriculture, Army, Commerce, Interior, Energy, Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security, and Housing and Urban Development, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chairs of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation); and the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Permitting Council coordinates federal environmental reviews and authorizations for projects that seek and qualify for FAST-41 coverage. FAST-41 covered projects are entitled to comprehensive permitting timetables and transparent, collaborative management of those timetables on the Federal Permitting Dashboard. FAST-41 covered projects may be in the renewable or conventional energy production, electricity transmission, energy storage, surface transportation, aviation, ports and waterways, water resource, broadband, pipelines, manufacturing, mining, carbon capture, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and machine learning, high-performance computing and advanced computer hardware and software, quantum information science and technology, data storage and data management, and cybersecurity sectors. The Permitting Council also serves as a federal center for permitting excellence, supporting federal efforts to improve infrastructure permitting including and beyond FAST-41 covered projects to the extent authorized by law, including activities that promote or provide for the efficient, timely, and predictable completion of environmental reviews and authorizations for federally-authorized infrastructure projects.
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Last Updated: Thursday, March 14, 2024