Rhode Island Sea Grant Lays Groundwork for Long Island Offshore Wind Farm Approved to Power 50,000 Homes

May 4, 2022

Wind turbine as part of the nation’s first offshore wind farm off of Block Island. Photo credit: Rhode Island Sea Grant

A growing global market for clean energy and an abundance of offshore wind off the East Coast has prompted developers to seek permits to capitalize on this budding offshore industry. Rhode Island Sea Grant extension staff helped facilitate the Ocean Special Area Management Plan that laid the groundwork for siting and permitting the nation’s first offshore wind farm off of Block Island, which has been a jumping off point for the developer, Deepwater Wind, in securing new contracts. With the successful installment of the Block Island wind farm and a growing market for offshore wind development, Deepwater Wind won a $740 million contract by the state of New York to construct a 15-turbine, 90-megawatt offshore wind farm 30 miles off the coast of Montauk intended to generate enough energy to power 50,000 homes on Long Island’s South Fork.

Arctic seascape with scattered icebergs, rocky shoreline, and distant snow-capped mountains under a partly cloudy sky, as the ice begins to melt in the warming sun.

Alaska

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As winter ice melts along the Alaska shoreline, revealing mud and water, snowmelt floods threaten property and lives. The rising waters from thawing snow can

Sea Grant announces new projects to address community needs regarding contaminants of emerging concern

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Sea Grant’s American Lobster Initiative awards $5.4 million to further innovative research and outreach in support of the lobster industry and fishing communities

Since 2019, Sea Grant’s American Lobster Initiative has addressed critical knowledge gaps about the American lobster and its fishery facing a dynamic and changing environment. The Initiative supports a regional extension program in the Northeast and a national research competition. Fifteen emerging research projects were selected in 2023 and 2024 for $4.6 million in federal funding by the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program. Coordinated by Maine Sea Grant since 2019, the Northeast lobster extension program was recently renewed with an $840,000 federal award that supports work through 2026.