The primary monopile for Ocean Wind 1, New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm, has been constructed at a New Jersey manufacturing facility – and Cape Could County isn’t completely happy about any of it.

New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm

July 6 replace: An excellent greater milestone occurred yesterday – the US Division of the Inside introduced the approval of the development and operation of the Ocean Wind 1 venture. In order that okays 98 generators and as much as three offshore substations. It’s slated to be completed in 2025.

It’s all programs go.

The monopile basis – that’s the metal tube that’s pushed into the seabed – was constructed at EEW American Offshore Buildings manufacturing facility in Paulsboro, New Jersey, close to Philadelphia. Ocean Wind 1 is creating lots of of development and everlasting manufacturing jobs in South Jersey.

The 1,100 megawatt (MW) Ocean Wind 1, which is owned solely by Danish wind big Ørsted, will encompass as much as 98 GE Haliade X 12 MW generators, and will probably be able to powering round 380,000 households. It will likely be positioned 15 miles southeast of Atlantic Metropolis. The plan is for completion by the top of 2024.

The state of New Jersey has set a purpose of attaining 7,500 MW of offshore wind power by 2035.

Electrek’s Take

This can be a very thrilling milestone, however not everybody in New Jersey thinks so.

The County Board of County Commissioners and the Chamber of Commerce of Cape Could, a county south of Atlantic Metropolis, opposes Ocean Wind 1 as a result of it thinks it’s going to adversely have an effect on marine life, and that “windmills might be seen from each seashore in Cape Could County,” in accordance with a press launch. They describe the offshore wind farm’s influence as “probably devastating.”

In the meantime, the Bureau of Ocean Power Administration printed Ocean Wind 1’s Ultimate Environmental Influence Assertion on Could 26, and it discovered that the venture’s plans are accountable, and that it prioritizes the preservation of pure sources, wildlife, and different necessary environmental elements.

Ørsted addresses environmental influence on its web site by offering a hyperlink to a examine in regards to the influence of wind farms on property costs within the journal Power Coverage from the schools of Copenhagen and Pretoria. The examine discovered no destructive influence of offshore wind farms on property costs.

The Cape Could of us state that they don’t really feel heard or revered by Ørsted, but it surely’s not clear what it’s that they really need. They cite a Harvard Gazette story of their press launch – I needed to ask them for it, as their was no hyperlink – referred to as “The Draw back to Wind Energy,” which isn’t about offshore wind farms; it’s about land-based wind farms. They usually additionally despatched me an article from the UK’s conservative-leaning Telegraph by Bryan Leyland, a local weather denial activist from New Zealand. Leyland’s group, the New Zealand Local weather Science Coalition, has been funded by the US’s Heartland Institute, a local weather denier group in Virginia.

Heartland has labored with the fossil gasoline and tobacco industries to disclaim each of their impacts on human well being. We’ve lined their false claims opposing wind energy earlier than, when actually fossil fuels and transatlantic transport are the precise major considerations for the well being of Virginia’s marine life.

So I simply can’t take Cape Could County authorities’s objections significantly, as their sources aren’t related or credible. There’s greater than a whiff of politics, not science, round their objections.

I sit up for seeing Ocean Wind 1 come on-line.

Learn extra: New Jersey will now require all-electric automotive gross sales by 2035

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