Phil Murphy exits the polling booth with his youngest son Sam, after voting at the Fairview School on Tuesday, in Middletown, N.J. (Bob Karp/The Daily Record via AP)
Dino Grandoni reports for the Washington Post:
For years, New Jersey’s blustery Republican governor, Chris Christie, has slowed efforts to cultivate wind farms off the state’s coast, wind developers say.
In 2010, during his first term, Christie signed a landmark wind energy law designed to encourage development of the renewable resource off the state’s gusty shore. But the public utility board controlled by Christie appointees never fully implemented a plan meant to incentivize that development. In New Jersey, turbines off the seaside horizon remained a mirage that never materialized.
New Jersey residents just elected a Democrat to replace Christie — one with an ambitious alternative energy plan.
One of the biggest energy-related consequences of the 2017 election is the gust of life breathed into offshore wind development in the densely populated and energy-hungry Garden State.
Gov.-elect Phil Murphy wants New Jersey to get all its energy from “clean” sources by the middle of the century.
Wind companies itching to build off the Jersey Shore are pleased with the prospect.
Murphy’s “got a really good handle on this industry, not only from an economic perspective but from an environmental one as well,” said Paul Rich, director of project development at US Wind. “I think he’s poised to be bold where others have gotten cold feet.”
“We are hopeful that a Murphy administration will continue to move New Jersey forward in the development of a robust offshore wind industry,” said Thomas Brostrom, the North American president of Orsted (formerly DONG Energy).
Although land-based wind energy has taken off in the United States — pushing wind-generating capacity above that of hydropower by the end of 2016, more than any other renewable source — the nation has built only one commercial offshore wind farm, off the coast of Rhode Island’s Block Island, despite the federal government awarding nearly a dozen commercial offshore wind leases for locations off the coasts of Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia.
With Christie leaving office, New Jersey could be next. Orsted, a Danish firm, along with US Wind, a subsidy of the Italian energy company Renexia, each hold federal leases to build off New Jersey. Another firm, Fisherman Energy, has proposed to build a wind farm in state waters near Atlantic City, as well.
While declining worldwide, the upfront costs of offshore wind are still much higher than onshore, and require more subsidization from federal and local governments to make financial sense to investors.
Until it expires in 2019, offshore wind developers can take advantage of an investment tax credit from the federal government. For seven years, New Jersey has had a law requiring the state to grant its own subsidy, too.
“We’re going to work to make New Jersey No. 1 in offshore wind production,” Christie said in 2011, not long after signing that measure.
But the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU), whose chairman is chosen by the governor, never finalized rules for that subsidy.
Christie “realized that he needed to jettison anything that looked moderate” in order to win over conservatives nationwide “when people started looking at him as president timber,” said Jim Lanard, chief executive of Magellan Wind.
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