N.J. offshore wind facility a year behind schedule, may never catch up, a new report says

A New Jersey facility to manufacture massive 400-foot-long steel columns to mount offshore wind turbines to the ocean floor is more than a year behind its planned development, according to a new study released this month.

The report says the plant may never catch up if federal tax credits are not approved by the state to help European power companies building the wind farms to finance three approved projects and several more in development.

Meanwhile, the facility at the Port of Paulsboro has only produced one monopile since its groundbreaking in December 2020. The state’s first offshore wind farm is scheduled to come online in 2025 and will need 98 monopiles — which serve as as foundations for the wind turbines — to do so.

“The federal government came out with tax credits to help with the creation of offshore wind and we were first in line,” Steve Sweeney, the former state senate president who championed offshore wind in the Legislature for more than a decade, said to NJ Advance Media.

“And now what’s happening is we are about to lose our position,” Sweeney added. “Other states have given the tax credits to the wind producers. They fired the gun to take off and everyone is running the race, and we are standing still.”

Sweeney, a Democrat, who represented parts of Gloucester and Salem counties, where the wind ports are located, was defeated in a re-election bid in 2021 after more than 20 years in the Legislature. He now leads a public policy center at Rowan University. His group released a report this month: “Benchmarking New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Initiatives.”

The state has poured nearly $900 million into the development of the Port of Paulsboro and another facility on the Delaware River in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County that will assemble wind turbines to sit atop the monopiles. The $250 million spent in Paulsboro was for dredging for more depth of water and to build additional piers to handle the 3 million pound weight of the completed monopiles.

The wind port in Salem County is not expected to be completed until next year. The location allows the wind turbines, and the nacelles that house them, to be shipped in an upright position. They are nearly 500 feet tall.

The Danish offshore wind company Ørsted and German large-scale pipe manufacturer EEW Group added $250 million for manufacturing facilities in Paulsboro to make the monopiles.

Currently, the facility only wields together sections of the monopiles made in Germany, then sandblast and paints them for completion.

EEW AOS is already more than a year behind schedule on its planned Phase 2 development — the construction of four buildings, including of plate-cutting and rolling mills, to transform Paulsboro into a complete end-to-end monopile fabrication facility capable of producing up to 100 finished monopiles per year from flat steel plate, the study said.

Ørsted’s Ocean Wind 1 project is scheduled to be online by 2025. It recently won a favorable decision from the state Board of Public Utilities for its preferred route to bring power cables ashore in Ocean City, New Jersey to a power station 7 miles away in Upper Township.

But the pace of completion of monopiles in Paulsboro, and the wind port in Lower Alloways Creek a year away, may mean that the overwhelming amount of hardware for the turbines will be made in Europe and not in New Jersey.

“The question facing New Jersey is whether we want to lead, follow, or be left behind while other states in our region capture the extraordinary economic, environmental, and energy benefits from renewable energy,” Tim Sullivan, CEO of the state Economic Development Authority, said in an opinion article in May for NJ Advance Media.

The Murphy Administration and legislative leaders have been in discussions on a bill to authorize Ørsted to retain the full federal tax credits, the Rowan study said.

Murphy has pledged to bring 7,500 offshore wind megawatts online by 2035. It is a critical part of his energy master plan, which calls for the state to get 50% of its power from renewables by 2035, and 100% by 2050. The effort is meant to wean the state off fossil fuels, and slash New Jersey’s contributions to climate change.

Ocean Wind 1 is the first of three wind farms approved by the state. The company won approval to build the wind farms, in part, by promising to also manufacture some or all of the component parts for the hulking, 900-foot structures in New Jersey, in Paulsboro and Lower Alloways Creek.

Sweeney told NJ Advance Media this week that he is considering running for governor in 2025. But until then, he said he wants to champion offshore wind production and job creation in the state.

“Offshore wind was twofold,” Sweeney said. “One, carbon footprint, doing something for the environment, and two was manufacturing and putting people to work. I keep sounding the alarm to anybody who will listen. If we don’t move quickly, we’re going to miss this opportunity.”

Other states are rushing to catch up and pass New Jersey in getting wind farms online.

States such as New York and Maryland have already approved federal tax credits for offshore wind producers. They are also following New Jersey’s lead and planning for manufacturing of wind turbines in their states.

Background information previously reported by NJ.com is included in this report.