An offshore wind developer is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for a one-year extension in making payments of $37.3 million required as part of the preliminary approval for its wind farm project.
Attentive Energy’s proposed project is a wind farm about 42 miles off the coast of Seaside Heights that would power up to 650,000 homes.
According to The Press of Atlantic City, the BPU was scheduled to consider the request during a meeting last week but abruptly removed it from the agenda at the last minute with no explanation.
“It’s been a tough year, year and a half for the entire offshore wind industry,” said Wayne Parry, a reporter for The Press of Atlantic City. “It’s in a position that it really didn’t expect to be in less than two years ago. Attentive was saying they’re still running into supply chain issues, but also issues affecting offshore wind as a whole. And that obviously relates to financial pressures on the industry.”
“The elephant in the room,” Parry said, is “the executive order President Trump signed on his very first day back in office to halt all new wind programs, both onshore and offshore, and directing the government to look for ways to cancel existing programs.”
“Just two years ago New Jersey was poised to be the East Coast epicenter of offshore wind. They really wanted to be the capital on the East Coast of what at the time was a rapidly growing and promising industry. And, boy, has that gone sideways in two years,” he said.
