US offshore wind had a rough 2023 — several major projects renegotiated or cancelled PPAs under cost pressure. 2024–25 has been more constructive. Revolution Wind began operating, Vineyard Wind 1 is substantially complete, and the Atlantic Shores, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and Empire Wind 1 projects are in construction.
The lease map and the queue
BOEM has issued offshore wind leases in the Atlantic (Massachusetts to North Carolina), the Pacific (Central California, Oregon), and the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic leases represent the bulk of near-term pipeline — roughly 30 GW in leases with another 20 GW in active development.
The Pacific leases are for floating offshore wind, which is a different engineering and supply-chain problem. Floating offshore is commercially proven in Europe (Hywind Tampen, Kincardine) but not yet at utility scale in the US.
Why 2023 projects failed — and what changed
The cancelled and renegotiated projects of 2022–23 (Commonwealth Wind, SunZia, various others) shared a common structural issue: they had been bid into long-term PPAs at fixed prices before the 2021–22 supply-chain inflation and interest rate cycle. When capex, financing costs, and supply chain costs all went up 40–60% simultaneously, the projects couldn't absorb it.
The response has been structural: states like New York and Massachusetts have reformed their offshore solicitations to include inflation adjustments, shorter PPA terms, and dual-track award mechanisms that better manage cost risk.
The Jones Act and supply chain
The Jones Act requires US-flagged, US-built vessels to transport materials between US ports. For offshore wind installation, this means US-flagged Wind Turbine Installation Vessels (WTIVs). As of early 2026, Dominion Energy's Charybdis is the only US-built WTIV in commercial service, with a handful of others in various stages.
The workaround has been "feeder barge" configurations: Jones-Act-compliant barges ferry components from US ports to foreign-flagged installation vessels waiting offshore. Costly but workable for projects on schedule.
The transmission question
Each offshore wind project today builds its own export cable and interconnection. This is inefficient at scale — tens of individual cables all landing in the same Atlantic beach communities is a permitting, engineering, and community-relations challenge.
Regional transmission solutions (offshore networked transmission) are in serious planning in New York and New Jersey. The first networked transmission awards are expected in 2026–27, which would change the economics of later-stage projects in those waters.
The Axis view
Offshore wind is capital-intensive, politically-sensitive, supply-chain-constrained — and also, on a 10-year view, almost certain to be a significant contributor to Atlantic-coast grid decarbonization. Developers entering this segment need project-finance capabilities an order of magnitude beyond onshore wind. Partnership structures with experienced European developers have been the common successful path.
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