NJ Ignores Industry Turmoil & Awarded 168,308 Acres Offshore Wind

Six OSW lease areas off NY/NJ in BOEM's Draft PEIS,
including contracts awarded by NJ to Attentive Energy
and Leading Light

In late January, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) announced two new contracts that doubled the amount of offshore wind (OSW) energy planned for the state and increased ocean concerns. The projects approved in BPU’s Third OSW Solicitation are called Attentive Energy 2 and Leading Light; these areas total 84,332 acres and 83,976 acres of ocean, respectively. Amid the increasing financial, technical, economic, and scientific uncertainties within the OSW industry, as well as increasing threats to the marine ecosystem, these contracts fail the test of good governance, fiscal responsibility, and due diligence. A reasonable decision would have been to cancel or, at minimum, pause the solicitation and await the results of the pending federal OSW cost/benefit analysis by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO). The true impacts of OSW are not known, and this expansion of offshore wind is irresponsible, reckless, and puts the ocean at risk.