Anti-wind energy activists cheer ‘another nail in the coffin,’ for New Jersey but worry about New York.

The plot lines of the ocean wind energy drama in New Jersey were never boring. Dead whales drove initial opposition, then, after a long battle, a change in the White House got the whole thing canceled.

In New Jersey, the plans to build coastal wind farms animated fierce debate among residents and visitors alike. Were the wind farms necessary to help stave off climate change that would threaten coastal communities? Would fields of turbines ruin the Shore for visitors?

Did it matter what they looked like? Was the construction of fields of enormous turbines itself an assault on the environment?

Despite generous tax breaks, and the full-throated support of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, the biggest New Jersey projects are now off the table, with the two remaining unlikely to proceed with President Donald Trump’s pause in the leasing of federal land within the Offshore Continental Shelf.

Under Murphy’s guidance, the state had sunk $1 billion into building the New Jersey Wind Port in Salem County and support for a monopile facility built at the Paulsboro Marine Terminal in Gloucester County. Monopiles serve as the foundations for turbines. Murphy was counting on the wind industry injecting $4.7 billion into the state’s economy and creating nearly 10,000 jobs.

The first blow came on Halloween night 2023, when Danish company Ørsted suddenly backed out of both its projects. which would have had the capacity to produce 2.2 gigawatts of renewable energy, enough to power over 1.5 million homes.

On June 3 of this year, Atlantic Shores pulled the plug, telling the New Jersey Bureau of Public Utilities it wished to back out of all commitments related to plans to build a large wind farm about 12 miles off Atlantic City. It was a move considered by most to be, in the words of anti-wind activist Robin Shaffer of Ocean City, the “final nail in the coffin.”

Meanwhile, up in New York, the Trump administration was doing an about-face on its opposition to Empire Wind, the wind farm being built 15 to 30 miles south of the coast of Long Island, which overlaps with coastal waters off North Jersey, confounding wind opponents and prompting a federal lawsuit in New Jersey.

Now that the promise of New Jersey wind power is over — or, at least, on a very uncertain hiatus — we talked to activists on both sides of the issue, as well as state officials and local residents, about what went wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) and what comes next.

Ed Potosnak, executive director of New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, said it was disappointing that the BPU did not move forward with the projects, which he called “lifesaving.”

“Now, to add insult to injury, another state will likely get those benefits,” said Potosnak, referring to the Empire project.

“At a time when New Jersey families are concerned about energy affordability and rising utility prices, we need to be building clean energy to lower costs, create good jobs in the state, lessen our dependence on dirty and expensive oil and gas, and protect our communities from the dangers of climate change.

“In New Jersey we lead, and we’re not giving up on offshore wind due to a temporary setback.”

Recreational fishing boat Capt. Paul Eidman, a leading fisherman and wind advocate and founder of Menhaden Defenders, called the Atlantic Shores development “not the end at all, more of a reset.”

“It’s just how the ‘system’ works,“ Eidman said in an email. ”It’s really a shame that things went down the way they did cause everything was ready to go.

“Looking at Jersey’s growing demand for power, we clearly need more power generation,” he said. “As long as it’s clean and not from fossil fuels I am a happy camper.”

Shaffer, of Protect our Coast New Jersey, who tracked whale deaths and organized opposition, said it was a hard-fought victory.

“It feels like we’ve been on such a long road to get to this point,” he said. “So many people played a part. People made their way to all kinds of meetings, public hearings in places like Egg Harbor Township and Atlantic City, and made their way to protests on beaches. I still remember seeing the artist that did the whale sculpture in Ventnor quite a while ago.”

As to whether the uptick in whale deaths could be traced to surveying and other activity by offshore wind companies, Shaffer said: “We’ve always said coincidence is not the same thing as causation, but worthy of further study.”

Neither Shaffer or Bob Stern, president of Save LBI, would rule out a future revival of Atlantic Shores’ project.

“What it does do is clear the way for Atlantic Shores to come back at a later date and request a new, higher … award for the Atlantic Shores South Project 1 and Project 2, which would locate 200 wind turbines along the coast between Atlantic City and Southern LBI,” Stern said in an email to supporters.

Save LBI is also petitioning the federal government to reconsider its approvals related to marine mammal migration and to “create a turbine-free corridor along the East Coast to protect the migration of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.”

Clean Ocean Action viewed the projects as industrializing the ocean and expressed concern about the impact on marine mammals. The group also opposes gas and oil drilling in the ocean.

The organization has now joined the federal lawsuit seeking to stop the Empire Wind project from going forward, and expressed concerns about the company’s “massive pile-driving ship ‘Thialf’ that looms Long Branch” and its impact on marine life.

Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, said the group “came to this issue not opposed to the idea of shore wind, knowing that climate change is accelerating due to our abuse of fossil fuels.”

“We carefully evaluated all of the different aspects of offshore wind,” she said in a phone interview. “The more we learned, the more questions we had. It just became very clear, it was extremely reckless. It was too much too fast.”

“The state continues to recognize the immense potential of offshore wind to create jobs, stimulate economic development, and contribute significantly to our clean energy targets,” said Alonza Robertson, spokesperson for the BPU. “We will continue to ensure that New Jersey remains a leader in clean and affordable energy for residents and businesses.”

Atlantic Shores’ petition to officially vacate its Offshore Renewable Energy Certificate will be heard by the BPU at a later date, Robertson said.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican who has a land-based wind turbine on his personal property but opposes ocean-based wind farms, said: “South Jersey can breathe a little easier.”

“Atlantic Shores stepping away means there will be no wind farms built off the coast of Southern New Jersey, and that is exactly the outcome we have been fighting for,” he said.

Van Drew has petitioned the Department of Interior to reconsider its Empire Wind decision.