The Biden administration just approved a wind farm project off the coast of Massachusetts.

It's now the 11th commercial scale wind project of its kind to get such approval.

This comes at a key moment for this sector because President-elect Trump has been a frequent critic.

As science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports,

researchers are racing to answer important questions

about the potential unintended consequences of this promising form of renewable energy,

even while current windmills are under construction.

Three decades after the idea was pioneered in Europe, offshore wind power is just over the horizon in the U.S.

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, they are staging and stacking the pieces of the largest one yet.

Vineyard Wind won.

What is the total dollar figure for Vineyard Wind? So we are about $4 billion.

Klaus Moller is the CEO.

It's in the high end because we have a lot of first-time investments here,

but it's not off the charge of what we've done before.

Vineyard Wind is one of about a half dozen utility scale projects at various stages of completion

along the East Coast from here down to Virginia.

The Biden administration set a national target of 30 gigawatts of offshore wing capacity by 2030.

It would be enough to supply about 11 million homes each year.

What is the huge advantage to putting them offshore?

Here in Massachusetts, you don't see a lot of space just available to do onshore wind.

Our wind farm is going to produce wind for 400,000 houses in Massachusetts.

That would be very difficult to achieve with an onshore wind farm.

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