US ready to auction wind energy rights off Carolinas coast

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) — The federal government plans to auction off the rights to produce power from wind energy in two areas offshore of North Carolina and South Carolina. The Department of the Interior says the leases are part of President Joe Biden’s goal of increasing clean energy generation. The sites being put up for auction on May 11 are 50 miles east of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and about 30 miles south of Bald Head Island in North Carolina. The agency has already leased wind power sites off New York’s coast and is planning to add sites off California and Oregon, the Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of Mexico and in the central Atlantic Ocean.