Kitty Hawk NC offshore wind lease signed

U.S. ocean energy managers have leased a 122,405-acre site offshore North Carolina to a company for offshore wind development.  The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's lease to Avangrid Renewables, LLC will enable the company to study the Kitty Hawk Wind Energy Area -- and possibly to propose developing an offshore wind project on the site.

On November 10, 2017, BOEM signed a lease agreement through which Avangrid Renewables, LLC will lease the Kitty Hawk Wind Energy Area offshore North Carolina.  The lease area is located about 24 nautical miles from shore.  Avangrid Renewables -- a subsidiary of AVANGRID, Inc. --  won the right to lease the site through a 17-round competitive lease sale or auction held on March 16, 2017, the first federal offshore wind lease sale under the Trump administration. 

The Kitty Hawk Wind Energy Area lease does not allow construction or operation of an offshore wind project on the site, but gives the company the exclusive right to submit to BOEM for approval a Site Assessment Plan (SAP) and Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for the project.  The lease bears a 1-year preliminary term, a 5-year site assessment term, and a 25-year operations term.  Annual rents payable to the federal government start at $367,215, or $3 per acre.  The lease also provides formulas setting an operating fee at about 2% of the power production value.

Avangrid Renewables' lease will take effect November 1, 2017. In a statement, company CEO and President Laura Beane said, "Executing this lease with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) not only begins the formal process of studying these 122,000 acres in more detail, it means building long-term local and regional partnerships as we explore the opportunity to develop reliable, homegrown, clean energy using just the ocean breezes as fuel."