The Biden administration earlier this month approved the construction of 195 wind turbines, the closest located just nine miles off the southern New Jersey coast, sparking outcry from residents of coastal towns.
As the Biden administration and other environmental activist groups tout the Atlantic Shores South project, nearly nine years in the making, as another step toward harnessing the nation’s green energy, a former U.S. Department of Energy engineer is sounding the alarm: Not only is the project detrimental to tourism and the ocean ecosystem, it will also increase energy costs by up to 80% over the next 20 years.
The company behind the project, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (Atlantic Shores), holds three separate leases totaling more than 400 square miles from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. There are plans for two separate projects with two lease areas located off the Jersey coast between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light and the third lease located in an area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Bight.
“Projects 1 and 2 are expected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power nearly a million homes with clean, renewable energy,” according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
And while Atlantic Shores South claims the project will generate $1.9 billion in economic benefits for the Garden State, an analysis by Edward P. O’Donnell of Whitestrand Consulting found that consumers, from residents to commercial businesses to industries across the state, will see a massive increase in their electric bills.
“Offshore wind is not economically viable without significant subsidies in the form of federal tax credits and guaranteed above-market prices for the electricity produced,” the analysis states. “The former is passed on to U.S. ratepayers while the latter is a cost borne by New Jersey ratepayers. In addition, transmitting large amounts of offshore wind energy to and through New Jersey requires major investments in modernizing and expanding the state’s transmission system.”
Construction on Project 1 is expected to begin in 2024 and produce its first electricity in 2027, bringing the Biden administration one step closer to deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore power by 2030 and drawing praise from environmental groups like the Sierra Club.
“We are proud to see New Jersey moving toward renewable energy and offshore wind development, and away from polluting fossil fuels,” Sierra Club New Jersey Executive 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 its transition to a cleaner, greener future for our communities.”
The company says Project 1 alone will reduce New Jersey’s greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons each 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 U.S. Department of Energy engineer and 25-year resident of Long Beach Island, said those statistics about the number of homes these wind turbines will power are incredibly misleading.
“It’s an intermittent source,” Stern said. “I see these statements and they’re carefully worded as if you see a statement that says this project has the potential to power 10,000 homes, which gives people the impression that this project alone will power all of those homes. That’s not accurate because it’s estimated to only be operational 40 percent of the time. So if you’re looking at powering your home year-round, this project can’t do that alone.”
Even Orsted, a sustainable renewable energy company, says that with offshore wind there will always be “the opportunity to use other sources, such as onshore wind, sustainable biomass, solar and large-scale battery storage, to help balance the grid and ensure the lights can always stay on.”
Orsted even mentions that when there is too much wind, offshore turbines are only efficient 1% of the time.
With that analysis, O’Donnell is mindful of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to have 11,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2040. That means federal investment tax subsidies will total more than $20 billion, dwarfed by the costs it will take to expand the generation and transmission system to move all that energy off the coast and onto the PJM grid.
“These ratepayer subsidies will exceed $100 billion over 20 years and will increase electricity customer rates by 55%, 70% and 85% for residential, commercial and industrial customers,” the report said.
To put that in perspective, a ratepayer paying 16 cents/kWh will see that price double to more than 32 cents/kWh, increasing their annual bill by $1,000 by 2047. This will impact consumers across the state.
As worrying as it is for Stern to see his electricity bills increase, he is concerned about the impact this green energy project will have on marine animals like whales.
“The underwater noise from all phases of the project, the surveys from the ships that are using acoustic devices to characterize the seafloor, then the noise from the pile driving of the foundations, and then the operation of these huge structures creates a lot of underwater noise,” Stern said. “We’ve studied this extensively and we think it’s going to cause a lot of harm to whales, dolphins, particularly whales that have to migrate to New Jersey to get to where they’re going.”
But according to Stern, the situation will get worse because commercial and military shipping and fishing boats will not be allowed into the wind farm complex.
“So they’re going to be stuck in these narrow corridors,” Stern said. “And it turns out that the corridors they’re going to be stuck in are also migration corridors for whales. So you’re creating not only a hazard for the whales, but you’re creating a hazard for the ships.”
In the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s environmental assessment, the agency acknowledged that Atlantic Shores South would have a major impact on the North Atlantic white whale, of which there are fewer than 400 individuals left in the wild.
Stern, who organized Save Long Beach Island to push back against the project, said community members also worry that the turbines, an eyesore just miles off the coast, will negatively impact tourism.
The Long Beach Island Chamber of Commerce said in an email that it opposed the project but declined to comment.
“Why are we doing this?” Stern asked. “People say we have to do this to combat climate change, but even the agency’s own documents say the impact on climate change is negligible because there are much larger dynamics going on in the rest of the world.”
Stern and his Save Long Island Beach comrades have not given up and have said they will take the matter to court.
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“It’s a waste of energy,” Stern said. “Unfortunately, it’s also a dangerous waste, and I think the country will regret it.”
THE Washington Examiner contacted the Bureau of Ocean Management and Atlantic Shores for comment.