March 30, 2021 — The Atlantic Ocean off of New Jersey and New York will become the epicenter of a national effort this decade to energize its power grid with renewable sources like wind and solar after President Joe Biden named the continental shelf off the two states as a “wind energy area.”
The White House’s announcement Monday locks in the federal government to an already all-in race by Mid-Atlantic coastal states to build thousands of skyscraper-sized turbines.
The efforts to build wind farms from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to Cape Cod off of Massachusetts are already nearly a decade in the making, with 17 current projects in development up and down the coast. Several are in planning stages for the waters off of New Jersey and New York. All involve European power companies, including the Danish developer Ørsted, which in 2019 won New Jersey’s first bid for a farm.
For years, the projects languished in a federal queue or permitting processes at the state level. But recently, governors like Phil Murphy in New Jersey have established ambitious goals for renewable energy production from wind farms. Biden’s announcement all but cements offshore wind’s place in the future of American power production.
Only seven wind turbines currently rotate in American waters, but more than 1,500 are in planning or development stages from North Carolina to Massachusetts, according to an NBC10 Philadelphia analysis of the federally leased areas and the 17 projects currently in development.