Major BOEM decision expected this summer; NJDEP issued 4 permits last week
OCEAN CITY — Ørsted’s Ocean Wind 1 offshore wind project earned a group of state permits late last week. If the process remains on track and other federal, state and local permits are approved, land-based construction could start this fall with power being generated by the wind farm before the end of 2024.
‘We are anticipating, hoping, that we will be able to begin some of the on-shore construction this fall after the summer season.’
–Ørsted’s Maddy Urbish, on timeline if permits approved, BOEM gives OK
Ocean Wind 1 involves 98 massive wind turbines 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic and Cape May counties meant to produce 1,100 megawatts of power for New Jersey homes and businesses. It would be the first of multiple offshore electricity-generating wind turbine projects not only off the coast of southern New Jersey, but all along the coast from the northern coastal tip of North Carolina to just south of Massachusetts.
On April 28, Ørsted announced what it called a “major state permitting milestone, marking a significant advancement for the development of the Garden State’s first offshore wind project.”
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said the Ocean Wind 1 plans are consistent with rules regarding the use, development and protection of the state’s coastal resources, according to Ørsted, and issued the first permits for construction and operation.
“Today’s actions by NJDEP represent significant milestones and critical steps that are needed to advance the state’s first offshore wind project and bring clean, reliable energy and the associated economic benefits to the region,” said Maddy Urbish, Ørsted’s head of Government Affairs and Market Strategy, New Jersey, in the release announcing the permits.
In an interview with the Ocean City Sentinel on Monday afternoon, Urbish put the permits in context with the plans and timelines for Ocean Wind 1.
The permits — the Waterfront Development Permit, Coastal Area Facilities Review Act Permit, Coastal Wetlands Permit and Freshwater Wetlands Permit — involve work in tidal waters, coastal areas and wetlands and freshwater wetlands.
“The issuance of these permits affirms that the proposed plans for Ocean Wind 1 sufficiently avoid and minimize impacts to New Jersey’s natural resources,” Katharine Perry, permit manager for Ocean Wind 1, said in the release.
Urbish called the NJDEP permits a package involving land-based construction parts of Ocean Wind 1. That would include transmission cables that would run across Ocean City and for the substation in Beesleys Point in Upper Township, where the cables would connect to the state’s power grid. (That aspect already has site plan approval.)
Both noted there are more federal, state and local approvals required to move the project forward. The major approval needed would be from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which Ørsted hopes will come by the middle of summer, followed within a month by a construction and operations permit.
BOEM is still in the draft phase of crafting the Environmental Impact Statements. The DEIS runs 1,400 pages and covers, in detail, a wide range of potential harmful effects the wind farm may generate.
“We anticipate getting the final Environmental Impact Statement in the next few months,” Urbish told the Sentinel. “The agency has been doing a lot of work on it since it released the draft last summer.”
She said the next step after that is the Record of Decision “which is a major milestone with BOEM, and based on their (permit) tracker that they are working on, we anticipate that in late July or early August.”
Urbish said that is the big decision on whether the Ocean Wind 1 project is acceptable in its entirety.
“That is the major final approval,” she said, noting there are some formal filing processes that would follow it.
“The Record of Decision is essentially the final OK,” Urbish said. After that comes approval of the formal Construction and Operation Plan (COP).
“The Record of Decision is essentially the final go, but then there is some formal permits that are issued in the next 30 to 60 days,” she said.
“We are anticipating, hoping, that we will be able to begin some of the on-shore construction this fall after the summer season,” Urbish said. That would include the cabling in Ocean City and the substation in Upper Township — “the sort-of-utility-style work that needs to happen onshore.”
She said the offshore construction is on a different timeline because of what they call “time of year” restrictions for different pieces of the work.
“Obviously we don’t want to do onshore construction in the coastal communities over the summer for tourism and other reasons and offshore is a slightly different approach because we have to work around different restrictions,” Urbish said, including some related to marine mammals and others related to different types of traffic in the ocean.
“There is a very long list that will all be laid out in quite a bit of detail” when the Environmental Impact Statement or the construction permit comes out, she added. All those details will help define the timeline, but the upshot is that the wind farm would be operational by the end of 2024.
“The project was always going to have a phased-in operation. We have what we call our three COD dates, our Commercial Operation Dates,” she said, which also involve a lot of factors, including how the power grid operates.
“We see a potential for having first power — that first COD date — toward the end of 2024 and the subsequent powers coming on in the following year. That’s what we’re all still aiming for,” she said.
Urbish noted that can change because of the factors that go into construction. There are many layers to construction, not just placing the monopiles into the ocean floor and the turbines with their blades atop them. It also includes connecting the transmission cables between the turbines and then to the offshore substations and from there to the power grid on land.
A $250 million facility to build the monopiles is under construction in Paulsboro.
Ørsted also is proposing Ocean Wind 2 that would be adjacent to Ocean Wind 1. Right now that is the “investigation phase,” according to Urbish, which involves gathering information before they submit a Construction and Operation Plan for that project. The date for that COP is still to be determined.
Support and opposition
Ocean Wind 1 was developed in a partnership between Ørsted and PSEG, but the Danish wind-power company is in the process of acquiring PSEG’s equity stake and would become the sole owner of the project.
Ocean Wind 1 and other offshore wind projects have received substantial support from proponents and environmentalists who believe they will provide clean energy to help reduce the need for fossil fuels in power generation to lessen the impacts of climate change and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. The projects have the backing of political leaders including Gov. Phil Murphy and President Joe Biden, and among numerous trade groups who see the economic impact of a new industry providing high-paying jobs in construction and maintenance of the wind farms.
Murphy’s 2024 Energy Master Plan foresees the state transitioning to 100 percent clean energy by 2050. Last fall he set an offshore wind goal of producing 11,000 megawatts by 2040. Ocean Wind 1 would account for about a 10th of that.
Wind projects have detractors as well, including environmentalists who believe there will be substantial harm to marine mammals, including endangered North Atlantic right whales and the commercial fishing industry fearing disruption of fish stocks, and those who believe wind power is neither efficient nor cost-efficient.
Locally there has been opposition to the Legislature and governor giving the state Board of Public Utilities control over allowing transmission cables from the wind farm to run through Ocean City, a right-of-way approval process that used to be under the control of municipalities.
Those lines would run through the center of Ocean City and out Roosevelt Boulevard to connect to a substation in Beesleys Point in Upper Township at the site of the former B.L. England Generating Station, a plant that was decommissioned after decades of producing electricity through burning coal.
Other local officials and citizens fear the view of wind turbines off the coast will disrupt the tourism economy at the Jersey shore and harm property values.
For Ørsted’s perspective and details on the project, go to oceanwindone.com. For a perspective from a grassroots group opposed to the project, go to protectourcoastnj.com.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff