LONG BEACH ISLAND — A federal lawsuit and a planned executive order from Donald Trump are two of the latest attempts to block New Jersey’s offshore wind plans.
The anti-offshore wind organization Save LBI recently sued a group of federal agencies and Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, a company preparing to build New Jersey’s first offshore wind power project.
The industry faces another threat. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, (R-2nd) who represents southern New Jersey, announced he was helping Trump draft an executive order that would halt offshore wind work along the East Coast.
“These offshore wind projects should have never been approved in the first place,” Van Drew said in a statement. “The Biden administration rammed them through the approval process without proper oversight, transparent lease agreements, or a full understanding of their devastating consequences. They are an economic and environmental disaster waiting to happen.”
New Jersey has three offshore wind projects in the works: Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, Attentive Energy Two and Leading Light Wind. Proponents of offshore wind say the farms will play an integral role in meeting the growing demand for energy while lowering New Jersey’s reliance on fossil fuels, which are a primary contributor to climate change.
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“It is well documented that all proposed offshore wind projects go through rigorous reviews at all levels of government and there are extensive processes in place to provide members of the public the opportunity to participate in hearings and provide comments on all proposed projects,” said Paulina O’Connor, executive director of the New Jersey Offshore Wind Alliance, an advocacy organization that represents offshore wind businesses and supply companies.
“Offshore wind remains New Jersey’s best solution to achieve energy independence,” she said in an email to the Asbury Park Press.
She said offshore wind is a scalable solution to help the state and country meet the growing electricity demand. It also would provide a stable, domestic energy source that delivers carbon-free energy at a utility scale. High quality jobs would also come from the industry, she said.
But New Jersey’s offshore energy projects and others around the country are under threat from Trump, who has claimed the projects are too expensive and dangerous to marine animals.
Trump has called windmills “garbage” and “the most expensive energy ever,” according to Politico. In the same January news conference, he said he would push for policy that would stop new windmills from being built.
Lawsuit aims to stop New Jersey’s wind turbines
Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind is poised to be New Jersey’s first ocean energy project; however, it faces numerous challenges from local citizens groups.
Atlantic Shores intends to build a 1,510-megawatt power turbine array off Atlantic City, a project that should produce enough electricity to power 700,000 homes, according to the company. The project would be built about nine miles from shore at its closest approach and be east of Atlantic City.
But members of Save LBI said the project will devastate marine animal populations and harm tourism.
“We believe we have organized a compelling case that will demonstrate that these federal agencies (that approved the project) were derelict in their respective duties to take critical information into account, and moreover, made arbitrary assumptions that entirely failed to disclose and consider the injurious impacts of the Atlantic Shores South project,” said Thomas Stavola, Jr., an attorney who represents Save LBI.
A spokesperson for Atlantic Shores declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Bob Stern of Save LBI discusses offshore wind during a hearing in Wildwood in March, 2023.
Noise from installing the turbine bases into the ocean floor will injure or kill marine animals, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, said Bob Stern, president of Save LBI.
Officials with the Fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there is no evidence that offshore wind is linked with whale deaths. Rather, entanglement with fishing gear and vessel strikes are shown to be a danger to various whale species, including the right whale, according to the agency.
“NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate and has not authorized — or proposed to authorize — death or serious injury of whales for any wind-related action,” agency officials wrote on the Fisheries website. “Offshore wind developers have not applied for, and NOAA Fisheries has not approved, authorization to kill any marine mammals incidental to offshore wind site characterization surveys or construction activities.”
Rather, marine animals are likely to avoid the construction area, NOAA officials said.
Who is behind anti-wind projects?
Those assurances have not stopped local groups from fighting the project. Two organizations, Save The East Coast and Defend Our Beaches, also launched their own challenge against Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind. The groups collected a petition with more than 2,000 signatures to block the project’s power cables from making landfall in Atlantic City.
“Turnout for this petition is a clear indicator of how deeply the community cares about this issue,” Sherri Lilienfeld, a spokesperson for Brigantine-based Defend Our Beaches NJ, said in a news release. “Residents want to be able to vote on this important decision.”
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According to Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, many of New Jersey’s anti-offshore wind groups are affiliated with the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware-based libertarian think tank that is aligned with fossil fuel advocates.
“Think tanks in the anti-offshore wind movement have received donations from six fossil fuel-interested donors between 2017 and 2021,” the authors of the Climate and Development Lab’s 2023 report wrote. “Of these donations, $16,278,401 has gone to members of a grassroots-appearing coalition at the center of the movement.”
Grass roots groups in New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are among the biggest recipients of “legal support, personnel, talking points, and financial resources with major organizations that have been blocking climate policy for the last several decades,” according to the lab’s report.
New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew discusses offshore wind during a hearing at the Wildwood Convention Center in March, 2023.
That has not stopped local residents from supporting the groups or politicians from answering their calls for action.
Van Drew, the congressman representing southern New Jersey, said the draft executive order for Trump against offshore wind will lay the groundwork for a permanent halt to ocean wind turbine construction in the United States.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
Amanda Oglesby is an Ocean County native who covers education and the environment. She has worked for the Press for more than 16 years. Reach her at @OglesbyAPP, aoglesby@gannettnj.com or 732-557-5701.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Trump order, new lawsuit take aim at NJ offshore wind industry