BOEM sells seabed off the seashore

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) recently held an auction to allocate offshore lease sites in the New York Bight. The lease sites will be used by the winning bidders to develop offshore wind farms, which will generate renewable energy for an estimated 1.9 million households. The auction has been heralded as a success, with winning bids amounting to a record 4.37 billion USD.

In this article, we briefly describe:

1. 1. How the auction worked and consequently how the outcome can be interpreted;
2. 2. Why, despite this being a record amount in the US, prices were seemingly lower than a recent auction for seabed in the UK (UK Leasing Round 4).

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