The Biden administration earlier this month approved the construction of 195 wind turbines with the closest one just nine miles off the southern New Jersey coast line, causing uproar from residents in coastal towns.
While the Biden administration and other environmental activist groups boast that the Atlantic Shores South project, nearly nine years in the making, is another milestone in the country’s harvesting of green energy, a former U.S. Department of Energy engineer raises alarm bells that not only is this project detrimental to tourism, the ocean’s ecosystem, but it will actually raise energy costs to as high as 80% over the next 20 years.
The company behind the project, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (Atlantic Shores), holds three different leases totaling more than 400 square miles with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. There are plans for two separate projects with two lease areas located off the Jersey Shore between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light and the third lease located in an area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Bight.
“Project 1 and Project 2 are expected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power close to one million homes with clean renewable energy,” according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
And while Atlantic Shores South says this project will generate $1.9 billion in economic benefits for the Garden State, an analysis by Edward P. O’Donnell with Whitestrand Consulting found that consumers from residents to commercials to industrial all across the state will see a massive hike in their electric bills.
“Offshore wind is not economically viable without major subsidies in the form of Federal tax credits and guaranteed above market prices for the power generated,” the analysis stated. “The former is passed on to the US taxpayers while the latter is a cost borne by NJ electric rate payers. In addition, accommodating the transmission of large amounts of offshore wind power into and through NJ requires major investments in upgrading and expanding the state transmission system.”
Construction on Project 1 is expected to begin 2024 and will deliver its first power in 2027, bringing the Biden administration just one step closer to deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore energy by 2030, hailing the praise of environmental groups like the Sierra Club.
“We are proud to see New Jersey move towards renewable energy and offshore wind development, and away from dirty fossil fuels,” Sierra Club New Jersey Director Anjuli Ramos-Busot said in a statement. “The momentum for offshore wind in New Jersey is only growing as we continue to lead the region in our transition to a cleaner, greener future for our communities.”
The company touts that Project 1 alone will see New Jersey’s greenhouse gas emissions reduce by 4 million tons every year, create nearly 50,000 jobs, generate $1.9 billion in total economic benefits, and generate enough clean energy to power 700,000 homes.
However, Dr. Bob Stern, a former engineer with the U.S. Department of Energy and 25-year resident of Long Beach Island, said these statistics on how many homes these windmills will power are incredibly misleading.
“It’s an intermittent source,” Stern said. “I see these statements and they are carefully crafted like you might see a statement that says, ‘this project has the potential to power 10,000 homes’, and that gives people the impression that this project will by itself power all those homes. That’s not correct because the estimate is that it will only be operational 40 percent of the time, so really if you look at powering your home throughout the year this project can’t do it by itself.”
Even Orsted, a renewable energy sustainability company, states that with offshore wind there will always be “flexibility to use other sources, like onshore wind, sustainable biomass, solar power, and large scale battery storage, to help balance the grid and ensure that the lights can always stay on.”
Orsted even mentions that when if there is too much wind, that offshore turbines are only effective 1% of the time.
With the analysis, O’Donnell keeps in mind New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s plan to have 11,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2040. This means that Federal investment tax subsidies will total more than $20 billion, which is dwarfed in comparison to the costs it will take to expand the generation and transmission system to move all of that energy off the coastline and to the PJM grid.
“These ratepayer subsidies will exceed $100 billion over 20 years and raise electric customer rates by 55%, 70% and 85% for residential, commercial and industrial customers,” the report stated.
To put that into perspective, a ratepayer which pays 16 cents/kwhr will see that price double to over 32 cents/kwr, which would increase their annual bill by $1,000 by 2047. This will impact consumers all across the state.
As concerning as it is for Stern to see his electric bills go up, he’s worried about how this green energy project will impact marine animals like whales.
“The underwater noise from all phases of this, the vessel surveys which use noise devices to characterize the seabed, then the noise from when you pile drive the foundations, and then ultimately the operation of these huge structures create a lot of underwater noise,” Stern said. “We’ve looked at it extensively and we believe it’s going to cause great harm to the whales, to the dolphins, particularly the whales that have to migrate to New Jersey to get where they’re going.”
But according to Stern it gets worse as commercial vessel traffic, military, and fishing boats won’t be allowed in the wind complex.
“So they’re going to be squeezed into these narrow corridors,” Stern said. “And it turns out that the corridors that they’re going to be squeezed into also happens to be a migration corridor for the whales. Now you’re creating, not only a hazard to the whales but a hazard to the vessels.”
In the Bureau of Ocean of Energy Management’s Environmental Review, the agency acknowledged that the Atlantic Shores South would have a major impact on the North Atlantic White Whale, less than 400 remaining in the wild.
Stern, who organized Save Long Beach Island in an effort to push back on the project, said there’s also a fear with community members that the windmills, a major eye sore just miles away from the coast, will negatively impact tourism.
The Long Beach Island Chamber of Commerce said in an email that it was against the project, but did not want to make a comment.
“What are we doing this for?” Stern said. “People come out and say we have to do this for climate change, but even the agency’s documents say it has a negligible impact on climate change because there is a much bigger dynamic going on there with the rest of the world.”
Stern, along with his comrades in Save Long Island Beach are not giving up and said they will be taking this to court.
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“This is an energy boondoggle,” Stern said. “Unfortunately, it’s also a hazardous boondoggle, and I believe the country will regret this.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Bureau of Ocean Management and Atlantic Shores for comment.
