The Virginia Beach Development Authority last week approved an option agreement with Dominion Energy for land that could support a future offshore wind project.
The deal allows the utility to buy about 30 acres at Corporate Landing Business Park within the next five years, which it could use for an onshore substation and grid interconnection point.
It is not related to the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, or CVOW, currently under construction about 27 miles east of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
Dominion’s eyeing the land for another possible project about 25 miles south, in North Carolina. The lease area, which the utility calls CVOW South, is located off the Outer Banks coast.
The area “is an option for future development,” Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton said in an email. “However, at this time, we do not have a firm timeline or cost for developing the lease area. Additionally, we have no capital budgeted for CVOW-South in our current plan.”
Dominion took over the lease, originally called Kitty Hawk, from Avangrid Renewables in 2024 for $160 million.
Avangrid, for several years, had sought Virginia Beach’s approval to run cables from the Kitty Hawk project to an underground landing site in Sandbridge, but faced significant pushback from residents. The company still owns an adjoining offshore wind lease called Kitty Hawk South.
Dominion also secured a third lease site in 2024, directly east of the existing CVOW project.
But the offshore wind industry has faced significant headwinds since then. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting all new federal leases and permits for wind energy.
It did not stop projects already fully permitted and under construction, such as the one in Virginia Beach, but would hinder immediate efforts to move forward at Dominion’s other two lease sites. (The Trump administration later issued a stop-work order for CVOW, but Dominion successfully appealed in federal court.)
Meanwhile, Dominion is working toward clean energy targets under the Virginia Clean Economy Act passed in 2020. The law requires the utility to source 5.2 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2035. The Virginia Beach wind farm will produce about half of that goal.
If Dominion pursues the CVOW South project, it could produce up to 800 megawatts, or enough to power roughly 200,000 homes, and would come online in the mid-2030s.
For the land at Corporate Landing, Dominion will pay Virginia Beach at least $200,000 per acre, in addition to a $120,000 fee for each year of the option.
The deal is a renewal of Avangrid’s option agreement from 2020, which expired last year.
