At NJ Spotlight offshore-wind roundtable, advocates help chart a path to administration’s aggressive goal — 3,500 megawatts of capacity by 2030
Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the Business Network for Offshore Wind
Tom Johnson reports
for NJ Spotlight:
for NJ Spotlight:
By 2030, more than 10,000 megawatts of electricity could be produced from wind turbines located along the Eastern Seaboard, with New Jersey well-positioned to reap the economic benefits associated with this emerging industry, according to offshore wind advocates.
The Murphy administration’s aggressive goals to build more than one-third of that projected capacity make it an attractive place to invest and grow the sector, proponents said at an NJ Spotlight event on the state’s energy future in Hamilton on Friday.
Offshore wind is viewed as a key component of Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to have 100 percent of New Jersey’s power come from renewable energy by 2050. By 2030, the state hopes to develop 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity; it plans to decide next spring who will build an initial 1,100 megawatts, followed by two additional solicitations of 1,200 megawatts each in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Only one offshore wind farm in Rhode Island is currently operating in the United States.
Delivering transparency and a timeline
“You’ve done everything right to attract the industry to the state,’’ said Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the Business Network for Offshore Wind, a panelist at the roundtable.
“You have given them scale; you have given them transparency, and you’ve given them a timeline. What I think you will see is an enormous amount of job growth and investment in the state.’’
Thomas Brostrøm, president of Ørsted North America, a leading offshore wind developer with projects in six states, said his company is excited about developments in New Jersey and the wider Eastern Seaboard relative to renewables and offshore wind. “We basically can see 10,000 milliwatts built essentially over the next 10 years, and that is very, very big,’’ he said.
If all those projects get built, it could create 96,000 jobs in the region, Burdock said. “It’s a big pie — there is a lot to go around,’’ she added, especially if states cooperate in growing the sector instead of competing against one another.
High cost of doing nothing
Joseph Fiordaliso, president, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities
But Board of Public Utilities president Joseph Fiordaliso, whose agency is overseeing the state’s offshore wind plan, noted that prices are going down in a keynote to kick off the event. “Can we afford not to spend the money?’’ he asked, referring to offshore wind’s importance to mitigating the effects of climate change.
Others argued the costs for offshore wind, much like those for solar, have declined dramatically in the past few years. “The U.S. and New Jersey has hit the timing absolutely perfect,’’ Brostrøm said, noting costs have dropped by more than 60 percent.
The state has long been targeted as one of the best places to locate offshore wind farms, largely because of bountiful wind resources off the coast and a relatively shallow continental shelf. The ocean off New Jersey also has the most variable temperatures from summer to winter in the world, a big factor in its wind resources, according to Josh Kohut, an associate professor at the Center of Ocean Observing Leadership at Rutgers University.
