This story comes from our partners at WHYY.
New Jersey offshore wind developer Atlantic Shores says it’s not abandoning its 195 turbine project planned off the coast of Atlantic City, despite asking the state’s Board of Public Utilities to cancel its current contract to provide enough electricity to power about 700,000 homes.
“This filing marks the closing of a chapter, but not the end for Atlantic Shores,” wrote Atlantic Shore’s CEO Joris Veldhoven in a statement. “Offshore wind continues to offer New Jersey a strong value proposition that includes thousands of good paying jobs, stable power prices, and real economic benefits.”
While it marks a distinct pause in a project that faces an uncertain future, the move was largely expected after a string of setbacks for the offshore wind project, including the Board of Public Utilities cancelling a bid for proposals in February.
The board’s role includes inking contracts with offshore wind developers to supply electricity at a certain rate. Electricity providers in the state were under an obligation to purchase the offshore wind generated power as part of compliance with the states renewable energy goals outlined in the 2010 Offshore Wind Development Act. Citing inflation largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Atlantic Shores, a joint venture of EDF Renewables and Shell, had submitted an updated bid for its projects this year that sought to increase the price for its electricity supply. But the state’s February decision made it impossible for the company to move forward.
Still, Veldhoven in his statement referred to the current period as a “reset,” and said the project will be needed to bridge the widening gap between power supply and demand.
Echoing Atlantic Shore’s statement, Kris Ohleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, a policy think tank that supports and advises offshore wind developers, agreed that the project is on pause.
“It’s kind of the end of a chapter in the Atlantic Shores story, but it’s certainly not the end of the book,” Ohleth said.
“It doesn’t mean they’re not developing the project,” Ohleth said. “They’re going to continue to develop the project and should New Jersey have a Democratic governor elected in November, we would hope that the new governor would restart New Jersey’s offshore wind program.”
While the project had secured its federal permits and was set to begin construction this year, the election of President Donald Trump set in motion a cascade of stumbling blocks. Trump vehemently opposes offshore wind and during his campaign this fall promised New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew to eliminate it “on day one.” After Trump halted new offshore wind permits, one of the project’s partners, oil giant Shell, wrote off a $1 billion loss. In a surprise move this spring, Trump’s EPA reversed a decision made under the Biden administration and pulled the project’s Clean Air Act Permit.
But the Trump administration’s decision last month to rescind an earlier stop work order on Empire Wind off the coast of New York boosted the spirits of offshore wind proponents and prospects for projects like Atlantic Shores. The deal to continue construction of Equinor’s 810 megawatt wind farm was apparently tied to New York allowing construction of new natural gas pipelines it had previously halted.
Ohleth said if pressures on energy supply continue, the Trump administration may change its tune with regard to Atlantic Shores.
“This shovel ready domestic energy supply is ready to deliver in a year’s time. They’re putting their sights on nuclear power, but that takes 10 years to develop,” Ohleth said. “So there’s going to be a reckoning with the Trump administration and knowing how they are, it will be quiet, but I’m imagining that some of the challenges to these projects will evaporate.”
Offshore wind opponents stay vigilant
Opposition to offshore wind in New Jersey remains strong, where residents say it will destroy the ocean view and hurt tourism, harm marine mammals like the Atlantic right whale and impact the fisheries.
Bob Stern, with Save LBI, agrees that the changing political winds make it difficult to predict the future of offshore wind.
“I guess the future just remains a little bit clouded,” Stern said. “Our attitude is as long as this is not totally resolved, we’re just gonna continue to try to have more permit approvals rescinded because we don’t believe that they were really well grounded in science and fact.”
Save LBI had success in its petition to reverse Atlantic Shore’s Clean Air Act Permit.
“We’ve asked [Interior] Secretary [Doug] Burgum to take a hard look at the Outer Continental Shelf rules for granting these leases and project approvals, because we think that the rules really are not strong enough to assure that projects are properly sited,” Stern said.
Rescinding the offshore wind leases, which the Department of Interior issues through an auction process, would be “unprecedented,” according to Ohleth.
“That would really be a next level wage of war against offshore wind, quite frankly,” Ohleth said. “It certainly would be considered a taking by the U.S. government that could be litigable.”
Save LBI also wants the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is under the Department of Commerce, to use the Endangered Species Act to declare a turbine-free corridor along the entire East Coast.
“It’s just not a smart thing to do to put wind complexes in the migration corridor for a critically endangered whale,” Stern said.
Offshore wind opponents say the endangered migratory North Atlantic right whale, of which only about 370 survive, are harmed by offshore wind construction activities. But NOAA’s researchers say that climate change and ship strikes have impacted the population. Still, in December NOAA released guidance on how to protect the whales from impacts of offshore wind development. The Biden administration provided funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to conduct research on how to save the North Atlantic right whale, but those scientists were fired by the Trump administration in February.
Stern knows that while Trump opposes offshore wind, his administration has also proposed weakening the Endangered Species Act.
“We should hear back pretty soon from the administration whether they’re simply going to consider the petition, and, frankly, I don’t know,” Stern said.
Two small offshore wind farms exist along the East Coast, including the Block Island Wind Farm off the coast of Rhode Island and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project. The recently completed South Fork project off the coast of Long Island, New York is the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. Five more are under construction, including Empire Wind, Vineyard Wind, Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, as well as Dominion Energy’s expanded Coastal Virginia Wind project.
