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Permitting Council Press Office (media@permitting.gov) 

WASHINGTON (December 6, 2023) – The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council) is pleased to announce that the Revolution Wind project has officially received final federal permitting review approval. This $1.5 billion offshore wind project will bring 704 MW of clean energy to Connecticut and Rhode Island, generating enough energy to power more than 250,000 homes.

“Expanding offshore wind capacity is essential to the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to powering a clean energy future from coast to coast,” says Eric Beightel, Permitting Council Executive Director. “The approval of the Revolution Wind project speaks volumes about the efficiency and accountability of the FAST-41 process and what is possible when you bring federal agencies together to coordinate on complex environmental reviews and authorizations, holding each other accountable and making timely decisions.”

Located 15 miles south of Rhode Island and 32 miles southeast of Connecticut, the Revolution Wind project is a utility scale offshore wind farm. When operational, it will bring 304 MW of clean energy to Connecticut and 400 MW to Rhode Island, displacing more than one million metric tons of carbon pollution-- equivalent to taking over 150,000 cars off the road. Offshore wind development is a priority across the Biden-Harris Administration, which set a goal to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.

The Permitting Council is the central coordinating body for permitting offshore wind energy in the United States. The Council portfolio currently includes a significant number of offshore wind projects, with a total of 16 covered offshore wind projects making up over 52 percent of the FAST-41 portfolio. If approved and constructed, these projects are projected to produce over 27 gigawatts of energy.  

Federal permitting review for this project was led by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Learn more about the Revolution Wind project here.  

About the Permitting Council

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 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. 

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