Climate and environmental campaigners on Wednesday hailed the first-ever U.S. government offshore wind power lease sale off the Pacific coast, an auction that drew over three-quarters of a billion dollars in winning bids.

The U.S. Interior Department said Wednesday that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s wind energy auction on Tuesday for five leases covering 373,000 acres off the California coast drew winning bids totaling $757.1 million from five companies.

The five sites offshore lease sites—two near Eureka in Humboldt County in far northern California and three near Morro Bay off the Central Coast—could, when developed, power nearly 1.6 million homes.

The Interior Department said that “the interest and success of today’s sale represents a significant milestone toward achieving President [Joe] Biden’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind capacity by 2035.”

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