Danish company had pulled the plug on its projects late last year
Last week, Cape May County announced that the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities formally vacated all of its orders that approved the Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 offshore wind projects that were under development by Danish offshore wind corporation Ørsted.
The BPU’s actions follow the filing of lawsuits by Cape May County in the New Jersey Appellate Division as well as in the Federal District Court.
The county challenged the BPU’s orders, all of which have now been vacated and deemed of no force or effect, according to a news release it issued Aug. 14.
The state of New Jersey agreed to let Ørsted keep $175 million in escrow funds in exchange for vacating the BPU orders, according to the release. Cape May County’s actions before the Appellate Division and the Federal District Court remain active.
“Today is a very important day in our ongoing opposition to these environmentally destructive offshore wind projects,” Cape May County Board of Commissioners Director Len Desiderio stated in the release. “The vacation of these orders by the BPU means that it will be much more difficult for Ørsted or any other Big Wind company to utilize these lease areas just a few miles off Cape May County beaches.”
The Ocean Wind 1 project would have placed up to 98 massive wind turbines 15 miles off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties with transmission lines that would have run through Ocean City, out Roosevelt Boulevard to Upper Township to connect with the power grid in Beesleys Point.
Ørsted was already in the process of Ocean Wind 2, which would have added up to another 111 wind turbines adjacent to the south of the Ocean Wind 1 wind farm.
On July 5, 2023, the The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) granted Ocean Wind 1, the state’s first offshore wind project, its Record of Decision, which Ørsted officials called a major milestone in the federal environmental review process. At the time, offshore work was planned to begin in 2024 before the Danish company pulled the plug on the project late last year.
Opponents of offshore wind projects have cited multiple factors why they have been against them, from fear of harm to southern New Jersey’s tourism economy and the fishing industry to visual pollution and even direct pollution.
In last week’s release, Desiderio cited the incident in Nantucket, Mass., where a turbine blade broke and disintegrated, spewing industrial waste into the Atlantic coastal environment and fouling miles of beaches, as an example of why the county does not want them offshore.
“As we have seen in Nantucket over the past few weeks, these industrial electricity-generating facilities represent an unacceptable threat to our environment and, consequently, to our local economy,” he stated. “The disintegration of a single turbine blade has led to tens of thousands of pounds of fiberglass, foam, industrial adhesive and other contaminants in the water and washing up on local beaches, which have had to be closed. We cannot allow that to happen to Cape May County.”
According to an article by Marybeth Collins on the Environment + Energy Leader website, this decision follows a motion by Ocean Wind LLC askingthe BPU to vacate its previous orders after Ørsted announced in October 2023 that it was ceasing development of both projects.
Michael Donohue, Cape May County Special Counsel for Offshore Wind and a former state Superior Court judge, said the legal pressure certainly helped.
“They say you can never know which straw will break the camel’s back,” he stated in the release. “But we can know for sure that the county of Cape May and its partners in the fishing and tourism industries, as well as respectable environmental groups, certainly contributed to Ørsted’s decision to abandon the Ocean Wind industrial offshore wind projects. And that decision led directly to their agreement to have the Board of Public Utilities rescind their approvals.”
Donohue stated that its legal battle is not over.
“We have informed the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court that we believe that there are still constitutional and conflicts-of-interest questions that they should hear,” he stated. “We are also likely to amend our federal court filings since the actions of the NJBPU would appear to have nullified Ørsted’s federal permits.”
The county also is supporting the efforts of the Brigantine in Atlantic County in its opposition to the Atlantic Shores project, which would be visible from the north end of the county.
“We saw with the Vineyard Wind environmental catastrophe in Nantucket that tons of industrial debris quickly traversed 15 miles of open ocean to end up on Nantucket’s beaches,” Donohue said. “With a similar blade disintegration in the Atlantic Shores project, given the typical southerly currents close to shore, Cape May County’s beaches would be strewn with thousands of pieces of jagged fiberglass and foam.
“This would be absolutely devastating to our local families and businesses that depend on our beaches for their livelihood. This includes everything from restaurants and retail shops to amusement piers and campgrounds.”
– By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff