Writer: Esteban Pages
3 min read July 2023 — If harnessed properly, offshore wind power has the potential to virtually supply the entirety of the Garden State’s electricity consumption. Governor Murphy administration’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2035 could serve as the catalyst for New Jersey to develop the key links of a soaring wind power supply chain.
Last week, the Biden administration approved Ørsted A/S’s Ocean Wind 1 project, nearly 15 miles southeast of Atlantic city. The project counts 98 turbines offering an installed capacity of 1.1GW, enough to supply electricity to 380,000 homes. It is New Jersey’s third commercial-scale project in federal waters enabled by U.S. government backing since the beginning of the Biden administration and is slated to come online before the end of 2024. The project brings the Garden State closer to its target of 11 GW of offshore wind installed capacity by 2040.
“New Jersey has become a national leader in the development of offshore wind. The projects currently underway will afford workers of all incomes and backgrounds the prospect of obtaining high-quality jobs by developing specialized, in-demand skills and talents. New Jersey is also leading the country in offshore wind by building the nation’s first purpose-built offshore wind port in South Jersey, which will support up to 1,500 permanent, high-quality manufacturing, assembly, and port operations jobs. EEW has also made Paulsboro, New Jersey home to its first North American manufacturing facility for monopile foundations,” Gov. Murphy told Invest:.
New Jersey’s 130 miles of coastline acts as a double-edged sword. It provides a valuable wind resource to develop offshore wind farms, explaining the current administration prioritizing development of this power generating technology. On the other, it makes its highly developed coastline vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and rising sea levels.
According to ocean protection-focused non-profit organization Oceana, New Jersey ranks fourth in the country by percentage of state electric generation that could potentially be supplied by offshore wind, as high as 92%, with 16GW of economically recoverable offshore wind resources. This would be more than double the state electricity supplied by fossil fuels, which currently meets 47.3% of the Garden State’s electricity demand.
“Our offshore wind initiative is a great example of how we are building a new supply chain. The applications from offshore wind developers are judged in part on their potential economic development benefits. We look for projects that not only satisfy our clean power needs but also invest in New Jersey manufacturing facilities, workforce development efforts and critical infrastructure. The offshore wind developers have made commitments to make substantial investments in local factories to supply turbine components, including New Jersey’s Wind Port, a key element of the supply chain. The Wind Port, a 200-acre marshaling yard and fabrication facility located on Delaware Bay, is the only port facility in the country dedicated to offshore wind. These investments will generate millions of dollars in new economic activity and hundreds of new jobs. We see these projects as New Jersey’s contribution to “reshoring,” bringing the jobs and the supply chain back to America,” said New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Commissioner Bob Gordon in an interview with Invest:.
The role of offshore wind in the Garden State’s power grid could face some headwinds, however, including local opposition and rising construction costs. The Ocean Winds 1 project faced its own wave of resistance, focused specifically on the route plotted for the transmission line meant to connect the wind turbines to an electric substation in Upper Township as it was argued that it would disturb environmentally sensitive beachfront and wetland areas.
The available infrastructure is another issue the Garden State is tackling head on. “The grid is over 100 years old and consists of the local electrical distribution system, regulated by the states, and the high voltage interstate transmission lines, regulated by the federal government. That network and the regulations that govern its operation were designed for a system built around large generating plants. Today, we have thousands of “distributed energy resources” such as solar projects, microgrids, fuel cells and offshore wind turbines, all trying to connect to the transmission and distribution networks. Often the grid does not have the capacity to handle the injection of new energy, and the regulatory process cannot cope with the volume of applications to connect. This is a huge problem, not just in New Jersey, but throughout the nation, and the ultimate solution will require a national response. For now, we are working with PJM Interconnection, the 13-state organization that manages regional transmission, to find solutions. Our short-term priority is to streamline the interconnection approval process,” said Gordon.
The commissioner remains bullish, however. In late October 2022, after several months of reviewing 80 project proposals from 13 major offshore transmission developers, NJBPU approved a plan to bring power from offshore into the grid. “No one in the U.S. has ever done this before. The process was guided by a set of federal regulations called the “State Agreement Approach,” (SAA), which allows state energy policies to be incorporated into regional transmission planning. Transmission developers will now make investments in onshore transmission infrastructure to accommodate offshore cables that will be configured to minimize cost and environmental impact. The network approved will cost almost $1 billion less than a series of individual cables to each turbine. The approval of this project should send a clear message to the marketplace that New Jersey is committing to offshore wind for the long haul. We believe the SAA is just the first step in a years-long process that will culminate with an offshore “transmission backbone” running from Maine to the Carolinas,” Gordon added.
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