Steve Gallo, executive director of the Bayonne Municipal Utilities Authority, said he is looking for innovative ways to save money for the city, and reduce the cost of his authority's energy needs. One of these ways, he said, is the possibility of installing modern windmills on BMUA controlled land to harness wind gusts off New York Bay to generate power for the Oak Street pump station. "We are trying to use new technology to find ways of saving our energy costs," Gallo said. "This is evident with the recent installation of solar panels in our schools that makes Bayonne the largest non-power company to supply energy on the east coast." Two years ago, the municipal authority in South Plainfield installed a wind-generated turbine to run a station, and with Bayonne surrounded on three sides, Gallo figures he might be able to do the same things. Windmills have also been successfully installed at Atlantic County Utility Authority, and combined with solar panels it generates enough energy to run the plant.

About 70 windmills will sprout in the ocean off the Jersey Shore, producing enough energy to power some 125,000 homes. The Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday gave its OK to a pilot project to erect the windmills between three to 20 miles off the state's shores.

The three New Jersey wind developers thought they had the whole deal locked up. After years of study, the Board of Public Utilities had granted each of them not only its blessing, but $4 million apiece for more research. But then, along came a Seattle businessman, and suddenly the ocean wasn't nearly big enough to hold them all.

The idea of wind turbines rising up to 500 feet above the Atlantic within sight of New Jersey's beaches is already drawing opposition from some environmentalists and tourism advocates. "It's troubling they are planning to put a huge number of turbines out in the ocean in the absence of environmental assessments of what the impact will be," said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, one of the oldest marine preservation groups in the state. "There also are some very hard questions about whether they are economical and what is the impact on ratepayers." Economics have proved to be the biggest hurdle to developing offshore wind farms. ...Even on land, wind farms can't generate electricity as cheaply as most conventional power sources. ...Public Service Enterprise Group, a Newark-based energy company that owns the state's largest utility, submitted one of the five proposals to build a wind farm off Atlantic County. The estimated project cost: $1 billion, nearly twice what it costs to build a conventional power plant that can generate even more electricity.

Governor Corzine's energy master plan for New Jersey calls for a reduction of 20 percent in energy consumption by 2020. It also proposes that by that same year, just 12 years hence, 22.5 percent of the state's electricity should come from renewable sources, chiefly wind and solar, up from 2 percent now. Further, New Jersey emissions of greenhouse gases should be reduced by 20 percent. These goals are remarkable. Energy use has been growing steadily. Nearly half the state's power plants are 30 years old or older. Some will have to be replaced, sooner or later. ...Some interesting things are happening, but as for the 2020 goals set by Corzine, he, and we, had better not get our hopes up.

Environmentalists are divided over whether "wind farms" are an Earth-friendly source of power. Timothy P. Dillingham, director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Littoral Society, is a member of the blue-ribbon panel that studied the issue. He and his organization oppose the idea..."We are talking about building an industrial facility out in the ocean," he said. "There is no framework, no set of regulations to ensure public protection. People think there is money to be made. People think there is some answer to global warming here. Caution is being thrown to the wind, so to speak."

"Offshore wind power development has potential to generate a series of quantifiable environmental benefits. These benefits appear significant in both absolute and monetized terms, but are arguably marginal relative to the scale of existing energy production and emissions affecting New Jersey's environmental and natural resources. Offshore wind power development also presents a series of potential environmental costs. In the absence of a developed literature, the scale of many of these costs are not readily quantified or monetized, making the nature of these impacts highly uncertain and necessitating additional research." (page 70)

The Department of the Interior has given Bluewater Wind approval to build a weather testing station off Rehoboth Beach. Bluewater Wind announced Wednesday that it has approval to build two meteorological towers off Rehoboth Beach and New Jersey's coast.

Under the rebate program, $4 million per meteorological station would be awarded, provided the weather station is up and running in 2009, and it's for a wind farm that generates at least 200 megawatts worth of energy. Garden State Offshore Energy's proposed wind farm is expected to generate 346 megawatts when completed. The weather stations would collect data on wind speed, direction and other areas of interest to the companies deploying the wind farms.

The Township Council is setting rules for wind turbines that would keep the alternative-energy sources far away from residential neighborhoods. It is set to hold a public hearing and vote to adopt an ordinance Wednesday that would restrict turbines within 1,640 feet of residential neighborhoods, schools or day care centers. The distance was based on studies that suggest separating turbines from housing because of noise and other potential health side effects, according to township officials.

Conectiv Energy is moving ahead with its plans to build a big natural gas-fired power plant in southeastern Pennsylvania. The 545-megawatt facility near Delta, Pa., will run on natural gas in the warmer months, and when homeowners need that gas to heat their homes in the winter, it will switch over to fuel oil. The plant will be able to provide enough electricity to power 545,000 homes. ...This is a time of building for Conectiv. It is also constructing a 100-megawatt power plant in Cumberland, N.J., and it is bidding for the right to build a natural gas-fired power plant to back up a proposed wind farm off the coast of Rehoboth Beach. Those plans are on hold after legislative leaders blocked the wind farm plan last week

More than 500 business and market leaders throughout the state met Tuesday to learn about the latest trends in renewable energy financing, energy-efficient technologies and market transformation at the Clean Energy Conference. The event was hosted by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and its Clean Energy Program.

After briefly wavering, Governor M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut yesterday agreed to sign onto a multistate greenhouse gas pact that Massachusetts and Rhode Island rejected Wednesday.

Weinstein said a county facility management representative will be meeting with the firm Switch LLC to discuss the possibility of bringing alternative forms of energy to the county. After the meeting the county and the company will be conducting a survey of area homes and businesses to see which forms of energy would best meet the county's needs. The meeting will take place in the upcoming weeks and the survey will follow that, according to Weinstein.

New Jersey is one step closer to bringing an offshore wind farm to the coasts of the U.S. Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE), a joint venture between utility Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, was selected by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities today to build an offshore wind farm far off the Jersey coastline. The proposed 350-megawatt wind farm would consist of 96 turbines nearly 20 miles offshore. GSOE will receive a $4 million state grant to help cover permitting costs and spur project financing though the final project, to be completed by 2012, will likely cost well over $1 billion, according to the state.

A New York company is still interested in putting wind turbines off the New Jersey coast, but a de facto moratorium on turbines in federal waters is in place while federal rules are developed.

When then-Gov. Richard Codey signed an executive order paving the way for New Jersey's first offshore wind farm in 2005, he didn't imagine it would take so long to get turbines spinning off the coast. The Board of Public Utilities now estimates the earliest date for the pilot project to be generating electricity from windmills off Atlantic City is late in 2012. ...Lance Miller, chief of policy and planning for the BPU, said projects of this magnitude take time. He defended the BPU's diligence in selecting the best proposal.

If energy-generating wind turbines are built in the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey, the state wants to limit how close to shore they can be. New rules proposed by the state's Department of Environmental Protection would ban such projects in all state-controlled ocean waters except for a half-mile wide strip from 2.5 miles offshore to the end of state waters at the 3-mile mark. ...the move is a result of concerns about the environmental impact of large offshore wind farms, particularly on migratory birds and bats.

State environmental officials oppose wind turbines anywhere in the Delaware Bay, a position that could jeopardize an Ocean County firm's plans for a wind park there. The Department of Environmental Protection cited potential threats to migratory birds, oyster seed beds and other resources in an Aug. 20 letter to Delsea Energy, of Toms River. Scott Brubaker, the DEP's assistant commissioner for land use management, wrote "the Delaware Bay is not an appropriate area for development of wind energy."