By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) – On Wednesday, the United States will sell its most significant ever sale of offshore development rights. The area covers almost half a million acres just off New York’s coasts.

This will be the first sale of an offshore wind lease under President Joe Biden’s administration. He has made offshore wind expansion a key part of his plan to reduce global warming and decarbonize America’s electricity grid by 2035.

It is a significant step forward in American offshore wind power, which was behind European nations when it comes to developing this technology. There are currently only two offshore wind plants in the United States, located off Rhode Island’s coast and Virginia’s, plus two other commercial-scale projects that were recently approved.

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will auction 488,201 acres or 197,568 Hectares in the shallow waters between New York and Long Island. This area is known as New York Bight.

Due to concern about military and commercial interests, the area has been reduced by 22% from what it was originally proposed.

According to government documents, the sale’s 25 accepted bidders are entities controlled by Equinor ASA, Avangrid, BP, Plc, and Eletricite de France SA. Only one bidder is allowed to win a lease.

According to the Administration, nearly 2,000,000 homes could be powered by the energy from these newly-offered areas.

Online sales will begin Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM local time (14.00 GMT).

In order to achieve its goal of installing thirty gigawatts of offshore wind along the country’s shores, the Biden Administration set the target for last year. Most of the development currently taking place is in waters offshore of Northeastern States.

New York City and New Jersey set ambitious targets to build more offshore wind capacity than 16GW by 2035. Wednesday’s lease area, which lies between 20-69 miles from the coast according to BOEM, could provide more than one-third of this potential.

A group of residents from New Jersey sued BOEM in January over their leasing plans for New York Bight. This group comes from Long Beach Island and is worried about possible lost tourism as well as the aesthetic impact of the turbines.