What was promised
In June 2022 the federal energy statistics agency counted more than 6 gigawatts of offshore wind that developers planned to build along the east coast by 2029. What was actually spinning at that moment was 42 megawatts, a 30 megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island and a 12 megawatt pilot off Virginia. The plans were roughly 150 times the size of the reality.
How a contract dies
A contract dies when building costs rise above the price the developer agreed to. A state runs an auction, and developers bid the price they will accept per unit of electricity for the next 20 years or so. The winner signs, then spends 5 or 6 years surveying, permitting and ordering steel. The price is fixed on day one. The costs are not.
Both bars are sums of the project sizes listed by the state agency. Together they come to 6,522 megawatts.
Show the numbers
| Terminated after signing | 2,490 |
| Selected, never finalised | 4,032 |
New York ran 5 of these auctions. The 2020 round awarded 2 contracts, Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind, worth 2,490 megawatts between them, and both were later terminated. The 2022 round picked 3 more projects worth 4,032 megawatts, then closed in April 2024 with no final awards at all. The fifth round closed in February 2026 the same way. That is 6,522 megawatts of contracts that went nowhere, from the state agency record.
Which projects were cancelled
Sizes for the 2 Ocean Wind projects come from source 5. Revolution Wind 2 was also cancelled but no size was published, so it has no bar.
Show the numbers
| Empire Wind 2 | 1,260 |
| SouthCoast Wind | 1,200 |
| Commonwealth Wind | 1,200 |
| Ocean Wind 2 | 1,148 |
| Ocean Wind 1 | 1,100 |
| Park City Wind | 804 |
Between July 2023 and January 2024 developers walked away from Commonwealth Wind and Park City Wind in Massachusetts, SouthCoast Wind, Revolution Wind 2, Empire Wind 2, and Ocean Wind 1 and 2 in New Jersey. Every developer named the same 3 things. Inflation, interest rates, and a supply chain that could not deliver vessels and steel on the old schedule. Avangrid said plainly that Park City Wind had become unfinanceable.
We are extremely disappointed to announce that we are ceasing the development of Ocean Wind 1 and 2.
Mads Nipper, chief executive of Orsted, in October 2023. Source 5.
Who eats the cost
Orsted took 4 billion dollars of write downs when it stopped Ocean Wind 1 and 2, and 2.8 billion of that was Ocean Wind 1 by itself. That part lands on shareholders. The rest lands on the states. New Jersey lost 2 projects it had built a policy around, and New York went through 2 auction rounds that produced nothing while the clock on its own targets kept running.
By July 2024 the federal energy statistics agency had cut 2,400 megawatts out of its own outlook, leaving 4,800 megawatts still in development. The projects that survived are real and several are now turning. The gap between 6 gigawatts of plans and what got built is the cost of writing a fixed price into a contract 6 years before anybody pours concrete.