June 10, 2023 — Construction of the initial turbines in the first major U.S. offshore wind farm began this week south of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, following a years-long legal battle and a series of federal slow-downs over the controversial project—part of the Biden Administration’s push for green energy and the first in a wall of offshore wind projects off the East Coast.
Construction began on the foundation of the first of 62 nearly 850-foot-tall turbines as part of the Vineyard Wind I project, the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, roughly 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, the company announced Wednesday.
Vineyard Wind, which was first approved for a nearly 167,000-acre federal lease site from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in 2015, is one of nine proposed offshore wind farms south of Massachusetts and Rhode Island leased through the federal government (totaling roughly 742,000 acres)—part of President Joe Biden’s goal of creating 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and an instrumental part of his ambitious goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.