Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Attentive Energy investing $10.6M in supply chain, startups to help New Jersey offshore wind

November 20, 2023 — A company proposing an offshore wind farm in New Jersey is investing $10.6 million in projects to help grow the industry’s supply chain and support ocean-based technology startup businesses in the state.

Attentive Energy is one of four projects proposed in New Jersey’s most recent round of solicitations for offshore wind projects. It is a collaboration between Houston-based Total Energies, and Corio Generation, with offices in Boston and London.

During an event at Brookdale Community College, Damian Bednarz, the company’s president, said Attentive Energy will invest $6.6 million in SeaAhead. That is a company that supports ocean-related technology firms; it will establish a business incubator program in New Jersey.

Read the full article the Associated Press

NEW JERSEY: With Ørsted’s offshore wind farms stopped, what will happen to $300M in guarantees?

November 13, 2023 — An offshore wind developer that is backing out of deals to build windfarms off New Jersey is under new criticism as the company attempts to pull out of paying millions of dollars in performance guarantees.

Denmark-based Ørsted announced last month it would not build two wind energy farms off the southern New Jersey coastline, despite initial approvals from New Jersey and federal officials.

This month, the company sent a letter to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities stating it withdrawing a Compliance Filing on its Ocean Wind 1 project. The company had deposited $200 million into escrow for the project, which would be put toward manufacturing facilities for turbine monopiles in Paulsboro, Gloucester County, according to board documents.

Read the full article at app.

Fallout as Ørsted unwinds Ocean Wind 1 project

November 7, 2023 — After dropping its flagship U.S. project Ocean Wind, Ørsted is seeking to pull back $300 million in obligations to New Jersey.

Once its board of directors had decided to kill the 1,100-megawatt plan on Oct. 31, the next day Ørsted notified the state Board of Public Utilities that it wants to get back a $100 million guarantee that it would complete the project. The company is also pulling back on $200 million it had planned to invest with steel fabricator EEW for its monopile foundation manufacturing plan in Paulsboro, N.J.

Ørsted and state officials signed off on those promises just weeks before the surprise announcement that Ocean Wind 1 and 2 would not be built – a move that Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper said would address more than 70 percent of the company’s recent $2.3 billion writedown of its assets in the beleaguered U.S. offshore wind market.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Orsted wants out of $300M forfeiture for scrapped New Jersey offshore wind farms

November 7, 2023 — Offshore wind power company Orsted is trying to get out of a $300 million guarantee it agreed to pay New Jersey in the event it failed to build its first wind farm off the state’s coast.

Last Tuesday, the Danish firm scrapped its Ocean Wind I and II projects in southern New Jersey, saying the projects were no longer financially feasible. The company cited supply chain issues, inflation and a failure to gain enough government tax credits.

The next day, Orsted wrote to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, saying it was withdrawing from an agreement it signed with the state under which it would forfeit the money if it did not build Ocean Wind I.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Offshore wind projects face economic storm. Cancellations jeopardize Biden clean energy goals

November 6, 2023 — The cancellation of two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey is the latest in a series of setbacks for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, jeopardizing the Biden administration’s goals of powering 10 million homes from towering ocean-based turbines by 2030 and establishing a carbon-free electric grid five years later.

The Danish wind energy developer Ørsted said this week it’s scrapping its Ocean Wind I and II projects off southern New Jersey due to problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain the amount of tax credits the company wanted. Together, the projects were supposed to deliver over 2.2 gigawatts of power.

The news comes after developers in New England canceled power contacts for three projects that would have provided another 3.2 gigawatts of wind power to Massachusetts and Connecticut. They said their projects were no longer financially feasible.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Phil Murphy’s New Jersey Wind Flop

November 6, 2023 — Phil Murphy huffed and he puffed, and a giant wind boondoggle blew the New Jersey Governor down. That’s the story of another failed green-energy project, as the follies keep being exposed.

The renewable energy firm Ørsted last week backed out of two megaprojects along the Jersey shore that it started planning in 2019. With his eye on support from the climate lobby for a White House run, Mr. Murphy courted the developments, which were meant to provide electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes. The company says cost overruns have made them impossible, and it wrote off $4 billion for the first nine months of this year.

Mr. Murphy fumed in public, saying the cancellation casts doubt on Ørsted’s “credibility and competence.” The Danish firm blames its withdrawal on rising interest rates and component costs, but it has said little about what made the New Jersey project uniquely impractical. At least for now, the company is moving ahead with wind farms in New England and Maryland.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal

NEW YORK: New Jersey’s offshore wind loss is New York’s burden to save Biden’s climate agenda

November 6, 2023 — In the long-running sibling rivalry between New Jersey and New York, the Garden State finally thought it had the upper hand.

The state, led by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, decided it could become one of the greenest in the country with offshore wind as its main pillar. But Murphy’s ambitious plans to make New Jersey’s power supply carbon-free by 2035 collapsed days ago when the developer Ørsted canceled two of the state’s three offshore wind projects.

Now, if President Joe Biden ever wants to meet his energy goals for the nation, New York and other Northeastern states are going to have to pick up New Jersey’s slack. And New York — the bigger sibling, the one with more money, more power and more attention — is poised to snatch away factories and jobs that New Jersey hoped for.

“We’re certainly the state with the greatest ambition at this point,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, which advocates for the industry.

New York has a lot riding on the success of offshore wind too. New efforts to save or replace at-risk projects the state has already approved are even more important after the New Jersey projects evaporated.

Offshore wind has long been seen as an essential power source for densely populated coastal states to meet ambitious climate targets. Wind farms don’t have to compete with people for land and send power to waterfront cities.

Approving new wind farms became a sometimes-competitive cause célèbre for Democratic leaders who wanted to expand maritime ports, open new factories and create union jobs. It also became something of a zero sum game, even though they share the same coastal waters.

Read the full article at Politico

Ørsted pulls out of two big US offshore wind power projects

November 6, 2023 — Offshore wind developer Ørsted said it is pulling out of its Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 projects off the coast of the U.S. state of New Jersey.

Ørsted Group Executive Vice President and CEO Americas David Hardy cited escalated financial difficulties and supply chain issues for the move, after the Danish company’s board of directors announced the decision at the start of an earnings call.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

As industry struggles, federal, state offshore wind goals could get tougher to meet

November 3, 2023 — Good news or bad news first? Because there was plenty of both this week for the fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry.

On Halloween, the Biden administration announced that the nation’s largest planned offshore wind development, Dominion Energy’s 2,600 megawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, received its last major federal approval.

The same day, however, Danish wind giant Ørsted pulled the plug on a pair of projects (Ocean Wind 1 and 2) that were planned off the coast of New Jersey, citing climbing interest rates, inflation and “supply chain bottlenecks.” The news touched off a firestorm in New Jersey, which has set some of the most aggressive offshore wind goals in the country and gone to considerable lengths to plan the transmission upgrades needed to bring all that power ashore.

The same financial headwinds have many U.S.offshore wind developers looking to renegotiate deals as the costs of their projects climb. And it’s casting some doubt on whether states and the Biden administration will be able to hit their offshore wind targets on time.

Read the full article at the New Jersey Monitor