OCEAN CITY — President Donald Trump’s memorandum that temporarily halts leasing and permitting for offshore wind projects affects Ocean City only indirectly and may have little effect elsewhere on the Cape May County coast.
The president issued an order at the beginning of last week so his new interior secretary can review wind leasing and permitting on federal property, while Trump himself has said he is against wind energy, instead favoring the nation’s oil and gas reserves.
There are multiple projects and plans under way off the coast of New Jersey, including Atlantic Shores off Brigantine, but the projects closest to Cape May County are dormant.
Solicitor Dorothy McCrosson told Ocean City Council last week that the president’s memorandum that halts leasing and permitting for offshore wind projects affects Ocean City only indirectly.
She said the memorandum orders a review of existing leases, which would include Danish company Ørsted’s Ocean Wind I and Ocean Wind II leases for projects that were planned off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties.
However, all of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) orders related to Ocean Wind have been canceled.
Ørsted had been approved for its Ocean Wind I project, that could have brought up to 98 nearly thousand-foot-tall electricity-generating wind turbines to an area 15 miles off the coast. It’s second proposed wind farm would have nearly doubled that to the south, adjacent to its Ocean Wind 1 lease area.
However, the company withdrew from those plans in late 2023, citing changes in economic factors.
Although the projects would have erected scores of wind turbines visible on the horizon to all the communities along the coast in Cape May County, the Ocean Wind I project had a physical impact only in Ocean City. Ørsted had planned to connect the wind farm to the power grid with cables that came ashore mid-island, ran through Ocean City and out Route 52 to Upper Township’s Beesleys Point, where it would have connected to a substation.
Because the BPU orders were canceled, there are no easements running across any land in Ocean City, whether owned by the city or Cape May County, McCrosson said. The easements had been under appeal when Ørsted pulled out of the project.
“The leases still exist but will be under review and there’s really nothing affecting Ocean City at this time,” McCrosson said.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff