TotalEnergies To Develop 1 GW Wind Farm Off NC Coast

TotalEnergies TTE has been selected by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to develop a wind farm in the Carolina Long Bay area off the North Carolina coast.

What Happened: The company, which is headquartered in Paris and operates a U.S. office in Houston, successfully bid $160 million for the BOEM's maritime lease area OCS-A 0545 in an auction held May 11.

TotalEnergies will develop an offshore territory spanning 120 square nautical miles located 20 nautical miles from the coast. When completed, the project is expected to generate a capacity of more than 1 gigawatt (GW), enough to provide power to more than 300,000 homes.

The project is expected to come online by 2030 and it is the second offshore wind development that TotalEnergies secured this year; in February, it was awarded a lease to develop a 3 GW wind farm off the New York-New Jersey coast.

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Why It Matters: The U.S. has been relatively late to include offshore wind among its renewable energy resources. The first and only development is the Block Island Wind Farm off the coast of Rhode Island, which produces 30 megawatts (MW), enough energy for powering approximately 17,000 homes.

Most wind developers have been focused on the Northeast section of the Atlantic coast, with the new TotalEnergies project being among the few being positioned along the Southeast section of the coast.

For TotalEnergies, the new project expands its offshore wind portfolio that currently includes projects in the U.K., France, South Korea and Taiwan.

"This project adds to our portfolio of more than 10 GW gross capacity of renewable projects in operation, in construction and in development in the U.S.," said Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies. "It is one more step towards our objective of reaching 100 GW of renewable electricity generation worldwide by 2030."