Once constructed, this offshore wind farm will power hundreds of thousands of homes in the Northeast with clean, renewable energy

Contact Information
Permitting Council Press Office (media@permitting.gov)

WASHINGTON (July 23, 2024) – The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council) is pleased to announce that Sunrise Wind is the latest project to complete required federal environmental permitting review and authorizations with FAST-41 permitting assistance. The $2.3 billion utility scale offshore wind project is expected to power 320,000 homes each year. 

“As the central coordinating body for permitting offshore wind energy in the United States, the Permitting Council is pleased to see projects like Sunrise Wind make it to the finish line,” said Eric Beightel, Permitting Council Executive Director. “As the Biden-Harris administration works to achieve its goal of deploying 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030, projects like this one showcase how the transparency, predictability and accountability of the FAST-41 program are a key factor in realizing the clean energy future.” 

Located south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts and east of Block Island, Rhode Island, Sunrise Wind is an 84 wind turbine generation project with a total capacity of 924 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. FAST-41 coordination and environmental review for the project was led by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). 

"BOEM’s approval of the Sunrise Wind project represents another step in building a thriving offshore wind energy industry,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. “The Biden-Harris administration continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing responsible projects like Sunrise Wind as part of our strategy to foster good paying jobs for local communities, ignite economic development, and fight the harmful effects of climate change."  

The Sunrise Wind project will support more than 800 direct jobs during construction, and over 300 annually during operations. Learn more about the project at permitting.gov. 

About the Permitting Council and FAST-41 

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 White House 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.