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NEW JERSEY: Ratepayer-funded offshore wind a boon to state’s labor, air quality

August 21, 2018 — The state is working to open the bidding for the first 1,100 megawatts of offshore wind energy by the end of the year, in time for developers to qualify for 2019 federal tax credits, a spokesperson for the Board of Public Utilities told a meeting of wind developers and supporters Monday.

That should save ratepayers about 12 percent of the building costs, said Anne Marie McShea, off-shore wind program administrator for the BPU at the conference Time for Turbines: What a Difference a Year Makes on Monday at the Atlantic County Utility Authority’s wastewater treatment facility.

The federal credits are due to end at the end of next year.

Ratepayers will finance the construction of offshore wind farms through an add-on to their monthly bills, awarded as Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Credits to developers in a competitive process.

The rules for the OREC process were published in the New Jersey Register on Monday, after being released in draft form last week.

The Offshore Wind Economic Development Act of 2010, intended to get the industry started here, was not implemented under Gov. Chris Christie, said Doug O’Malley of Environment New Jersey, one of the organizers. But Gov. Phil Murphy, who is looking for the state to rely 100 percent on clean energy by 2050, has made it a priority.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Wind energy eyes restart in N.J. with Gov. Phil Murphy in office

March 8, 2018 — ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — After building New Jersey’s only wind-energy complex here in 2005, Paul J. Gallagher teamed up with a group of commercial fishermen on an even more ambitious project: building the nation’s first offshore wind farm within sight of the city’s famous Boardwalk.

Fishermen’s Energy LLC spent millions of dollars to obtain permits to build a demonstration project in state waters three miles off Atlantic City. But Gov. Chris Christie, concerned about the high costs of offshore wind, declined to create the rules needed to get the industry off the ground. Fishermen’s closed its office last year and let go its staff after a $47 million federal grant expired.

“Last year was hard,” said Gallagher, 67, Fishermen’s chief operating officer. “We just slowed to a crawl and cut a lot of expenses.”

The political winds have shifted in New Jersey, and Gov. Murphy’s inauguration in January has dramatically revived prospects for the state’s offshore wind industry, which advocates hope could supply up to a third of the state’s power by 2030.

The new governor signed an executive order directing the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to restart the process to create the rules governing the offshore wind market, which was authorized under the state’s landmark 2010 Offshore Wind Economic Development Act but stalled under Christie.

Gallagher has returned to the public circuit, selling Fishermen’s as the only fully permitted shovel-ready offshore project in New Jersey, though it lost the title as America’s first offshore commercial project to a Rhode Island wind farm in 2016.

“We’re maybe the only offshore project in the United States that can be built in the next 24 months,” Gallagher said.

Read the full story at the Philadelphia Inquirer