Wind Energy

The Biden administration announced a partnership Thursday with a bipartisan group of East Coast governors, including North Carolina's Roy Cooper, to help meet state and federal goals for expanding offshore wind energy and fighting climate change.

Two companies — Duke Energy and a French company — have won leases for offshore wind farms off North Carolina with bids totaling $315 million.

The federal government will auction leases Wednesday for two potential wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean off Wilmington. Someday they could power a half-million homes, but there's still years of work before that happens.

Two wind turbines 27 miles off the coast of Virginia are generating climate-friendly electricity and providing data that's being used to plan for a much larger offshore wind farm there. WFAE climate reporter David Boraks visited and got a glimpse of a budding industry that officials eventually hope to see off North Carolina, though planning here is years behind.

North Carolina officials led by Gov. Roy Cooper are at an offshore wind conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey, this week promoting the state as a base for offshore wind development.

Duke Energy does not have wind farms in the Carolinas, but the utility says wind energy could be part of its long-term strategy to cut carbon emissions from electricity generation. CEO Lynn Good hinted recently that the Charlotte-based company is looking at offshore wind energy along the Atlantic Coast. 

The U.S. Department of the Interior says it’s going ahead with the lease of a nearly 200-square mile area off the North Carolina coast for offshore wind development.

A group of 10 advocacy groups has formed the Offshore Wind for North Carolina coalition, or OSW4NC, to lobby for funding, legislation and anything else that will get wind turbines turning off the North Carolina coast.

The governor on Wednesday signed Executive Order No. 218, which calls for developing 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and 8 gigawatts by 2040. If that happens, the governor said that would power 2.3 million homes by 2040.

A new report says as many as two dozen wind farms could be built off the East Coast over the next 15 years. But North Carolina has work to do if it wants to compete for the estimated $140 billion in investment.