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This is Planet Money from NPR.

Late last summer, Mike Salato was in his New Orleans office early. A hurricane was

brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, but Mike was fixed on his screen for another big

event for the Gulf.

See, Mike had helped set up the first ever auction

for offshore wind farms in the region.

He works for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

That's a government agency that manages how the sea,

owned by the government, is used for things like drilling oil or gas.

It was leasing out patches of water for companies to build giant wind turbines in the water and sell their electricity.

It was a lot of anticipation.

We were just waiting to see what those first bids would be, a lot of excitement.

A lot of excitement, and you can hear it in his voice.

I mean look Mike is a steady hand on this big government work so you know he's appropriately measured.

But this auction could mean pretty high bids.

A similar patch of ocean near New York had gone for

over a billion dollars and when Mike had asked around with developers about

interest in this Gulf site. We had a very good response, so we thought that they would be competitive interest.

...