The two offshore wind projects Empire Wind 1 and Empire Wind 2 that are to be built off the coast of New York State, US, and for which Danish Vestas has been appointed as preferred turbine supplier, came one step closer to final approval on Monday.

The two projects, owned by Norwegian Equinor and British BP, have received environmental approval from the Bureau and Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Recharge News writes.

BOEM has also stated that the authority expects to issue a record of decision, a final federal decision on approval, later this fall.

The two projects are planned to have a total capacity of 2.1 GW for which Vestas was the preferred supplier back in 2021 with 138 V236-15MW turbines.

However, the projects have been hit by financial difficulties similar to Danish Ørsted’s US offshore wind projects, and the two developers have previously announced that they are seeking to increase the price of the power the turbines will deliver by up to 54% across the companies’ combined development portfolio in New York.

”Unprecedented global and regional supply chain bottlenecks, combined with the increasing pricing pressures due to the current global inflationary environment and the increases in the cost of capital due to rising interest rates, have made it far more expensive to develop projects,” reads an August announcement.

Empire Wind 1 was won in a tender in 2019 at a price of USD 118 per MWh while Empire Wind 2 was awarded in 2021 at an electricity price of USD 107 per MWh.

Equinor and BP want a price increase of 35% for Empire Wind 1 to USD 159 and 66% for Empire Wind 2 to USD 178.

(Translated by DeepL with additional editing by Christian Radich Hoffman)