Offshore Wind

PPA supports the responsible development of offshore wind to combat climate change by achieving NJ’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2035.

Hot Issue

Wind Farm Development Off the New Jersey Coast

OVERVIEW

The state of NJ plans to install 11 GW of offshore wind energy (11,000 MW) off its coast to generate clean energy. Multiple wind farms are in various stages of the design, permitting, and construction process, with the first delivery of power expected in 2027. Each wind farm is expected to be in operation between 20-30 years.

This represents a significant step in the battle against climate change and poor air quality that impacts all NJ residents. It takes less than a year to ‘payback’ the greenhouse gas emissions required to manufacture and construct an offshore wind farm, leaving the remaining 2+ decades of operation to generate carbon-free electricity.

PPA supports the responsible development of offshore wind to combat climate change by achieving NJ’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2035. This power source will be an important complement to the solar power that is produced in the Pinelands and elsewhere in New Jersey.

The overwhelming majority of environmental groups support the responsible development of offshore wind energy. However, public understanding of environmental issues remains low, which has been leveraged by a vocal minority of residents to resist this change. PPA staff assist with educational events, attend relevant hearings and public engagement events, and stay up-to-date on relevant research through the Wind Works Coalition.

Image from the BOEM interactive map of all leases and planning areas for offshore wind in the United States.

CURRENT STATUS

BOEM has identified Wind Energy Areas (WEA) that are most suitable for commercial wind activities, and most have been leased to energy companies that are in various stages of permitting and construction along the New Jersey coast.

As energy companies develop their plans for the wind farms that best suit their lease areas, the NJ Board of Public Utilities has been conducting multiple rounds of solicitations to purchase power from the various wind farms. Read more about the solicitation schedule that the NJBPU is following to achieve NJ’s target of 11 GW of offshore wind power on their website.

Atlantic Shores South is projected to be the first operational wind farm on the NJ coast, with construction planned to start in 2024, and the first delivery of power expected in 2027. Find updates for all projects on the BOEM website.

The NJBPU released an Energy Master Plan in 2019 and began the process to update the EMP in 2024. The New Jersey legislature has been making strides towards adopting a Clean Electricity Standard (CES) that would codify Governor Murphy’s goal of 100% clean energy by the year 2035. Read more about the legislation here.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Sign up for email updates from the NJ Wind Works Coalition with opportunities to submit public comments on environmental impact statements and permit hearings.

OFFSHORE WIND & THE PINELANDS

We welcome the climate and air quality benefits that offshore wind will bring, but would not allow the development to proceed in a way that compromises other environmental goals. PPA participates in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process that is carried out by BOEM to anticipate and mitigate environmental impacts—both positive and negative — to ensure that development proceeds in the most responsible manner possible. PPA staff review environmental impact statements associated with each offshore wind project to assess impacts to both marine and Pinelands resources. The aspect most relevant to the Pinelands are the transmission lines that must cross the coastline to bring offshore wind-generated power onshore. We support the coordination of onshore transmission among multiple projects—as in the case of the planned Larrabee Tri-Collector Station in Howell Township—and the repurposing of existing fossil fuel infrastructure to serve clean energy production instead (see the example of the B.L. England Generating Station).

Specific points that we advocate for in our public comments to BOEM and the NJDEP:

We are advocating that partial decommissioning be made the default for all offshore wind projects, leaving the bottom-most parts of the wind turbines in place after the turbines are retired. It would be nonsensical to establish thriving reef communities, only to remove them at the end of the wind project’s lifecycle. As described in Smyth et al.’s 2015 paper on “Renewables to Reefs”, a partial decommissioning plan maximizes environmental benefits that can persist beyond the lifetime of the windmills themselves.
We are pushing for the discontinuation of sulfur-hexafluoride (SF₆), the most potent greenhouse gas known, in any energy infrastructure. This gas is used ubiquitously throughout the American power grid and is not unique to offshore wind; new energy projects and grid modernization present the opportunity to eliminate its use from our outdated infrastructure.
We support the regional approach that New Jersey has taken to conducting research and monitoring, leveraging the deep local expertise that can be found in New Jersey’s institutions of higher learning, such as Rutgers University, Monmouth University, and Stockton University.
We support the measures that BOEM has planned to mitigate potential impacts on the North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW). We acknowledge that the greatest threats to the NARW are entanglement in fishing gear, vessel strikes, and climate change, but we still urge the utmost caution in construction activities during the limited time window that these whales are passing through our region. We view this wind project as an important measure to protect the longevity of this species and that of other marine mammals from the deadly impact of collisions with the largest ships: by weight, 40% of maritime trade is dedicated to exchanging fossil fuels and petrochemicals (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), so reducing our dependence on fossil fuels through the development of offshore wind can have a direct impact on this problem.