President Biden’s new offshore wind plan could be boost to New Jersey

The Biden administration announced Monday what it called “a set of bold actions” to jump-start offshore wind that could provide a big boost to New Jersey’s own ambitious plans for wind power generation off its coast.

National climate advisor Gina McCarthy, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with state officials, industry executives, and labor leaders to announce a goal of producing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030 while reducing carbon emissions and creating thousands of renewable-energy jobs.

Currently, the U.S. has only one functioning offshore wind farm, located off Block Island, near the coast of Rhode Island, but multiple states have already committed to installing up to 31 gigawatts of offshore power by 2035, enough to power millions of homes. The projects, however, are all at various stages of readiness, and many are awaiting reviews and permits. The shared federal goal could make things easier.

The White House said its new goal will create thousands of jobs along the East Coast, into the Gulf of Mexico, and along the Pacific Coast. And many of those will be good-paying union jobs, it said. Though states are proposing the projects, the farms would be located in federal waters. The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) awards the leases.

New Jersey’s first wind project, Ocean Wind, is to be built by the Danish multinational Ørsted, in partnership with PSEG, which is the parent company of PSE&G, the state’s largest publicly owned utility. When complete in 2024, the wind farm, set about 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City, will generate 1,100 megawatts, enough to power 500,000 homes every year.

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“President Biden has declared very clearly that when he thinks of climate, he thinks of people and jobs — good-paying, union jobs,” McCarthy said in a statement on Monday’s announcement.

“Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind. This commitment to a new, untapped industry will create pathways to the middle class for people from all backgrounds and communities,” she continued.

Federal officials said Monday that they are readying an environmental impact statement that Ocean Wind will need in order to get a necessary permit so that construction can start. Ocean Wind is expected to become the nation’s third utility-scale offshore wind project to undergo the permitting process, behind Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts and South Fork in Rhode Island.

“Ørsted is thrilled that we have reached this important permitting milestone for the Ocean Wind project,” said David Hardy, CEO of Ørsted Offshore North America on Monday. “It’s a great day for the U.S. offshore wind industry and for all New Jerseyans.”

Gov. Phil Murphy’s office issued a statement saying the permitting process started by the Biden administration is a “monumental step” that could take 22 months to complete.

“Developing and growing New Jersey’s offshore wind capabilities has been among the highest priorities of my administration,” Murphy said.

The BOEM anticipates starting environmental reviews for up to 10 additional projects later this year.

New Jersey plans to award a second offshore wind project this year that could be twice the size of Ocean Wind. It has plans for even more projects to achieve a goal set by Murphy of producing 7,500 megawatts of wind power through 2035, enough to power 3.2 million homes a year. So a push by the federal government to speed up environmental impact statements could help accelerate the project.

Also Monday, the U.S. Maritime Administration said it plans $230 million in grants for port and related infrastructure projects.

Although federal officials did not say how they will spend that money, their goals sound very similar to New Jersey’s: Conduct offshore wind research and development, and focus on getting the supply chain of products needed to build the turbines in the U.S. and not of Europe.

New Jersey is dedicating two ports to offshore wind.

The Paulsboro Marine Terminal in Gloucester County is set to become a manufacturing facility for the giant, five-inch-thick, 400-foot-long, 2,500-ton steel monopiles that get driven into the ocean floor as a foundation for the wind turbines towers. They would be the first monopiles being built in the U.S.

The state plans to build a $200 million wind port in Lower Alloways Creek, Salem County that would be the first port in the U.S. built specifically for offshore wind needs. Officials hope turbine components will be built there.

The state also plans a Wind Institute, but hasn’t said where it would be located. The institute would help centralize curriculum and research from local universities, such as Rowan, Stockton, and Rutgers.

The Biden administration announcement calls for port upgrades of $500 million or more, adding one to two new U.S. factories for each major wind farm component including wind turbine nacelles, blades, towers, foundations, and subsea cables, and the construction of specialized turbine installation vessels. It says that could mean an additional demand of seven million tons of domestic steel.

During Monday’s announcement, federal officials announced a new “priority area” for offshore wind in the New York Bight, an area of shallow water between Long Island and the New Jersey coast. Officials cited a study by Wood Mackenzie, a global energy research firm, that wind could support 25,000 development and construction jobs from 2022 to 2030, as well as an additional 7,000 jobs in communities supported by this development.

Also Monday, NOAA announced it had signed a deal with Ørsted to share data to fill in gaps in ocean sciences, such as mapping. And officials said they would spend $1 million to study understand the impact of offshore wind and fishing and coastal communities.