June 26, 2023 – Speaking at a public hearing conducted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on the two offshore wind projects proposed by Atlantic Shores, Kin Gee, president of CHARGE, spoke in general support of offshore wind and specifically the Atlantic Shores project.
Generating power far from end users and transmitting that power over hundreds if not thousands of miles away is a business model that is over 100 years old. This dated business model needs miles and miles of high-power transmission lines with its attendant transmission loss, collateral damage to property owners along the route, and high costs to electric consumers. Dramatically expanding new transmission lines may not be the only answer and may not even be the right answer.
CHARGE believes a better alternative is offshore wind.
According to the Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, data suggests the potential for more than 4,000 gigawatts per year in federal waters of the United States and Great Lakes. This is approximately 3 times the annual US electricity consumption.
At the same time, NOAA’s National Ocean Service estimated that nearly 40% of the American population lived in counties on the coast.
Given that this renewable source of power is so much closer to the end users, it is vitally important and makes strategic sense to assign offshore wind as a high priority as part of our national energy policy.
The Atlantic Shores offshore wind projects will provide significant sustainable and renewable power close to end users without long inland transmission lines. In addition, the project has the potential to avoid over 5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. This is the equivalent of more than a million additional passenger vehicles per year.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has found that the Atlantic Shores project will have beneficial impacts on overall air and water quality for New Jersey, allowing our communities to breathe easier.
“While we support offshore wind and specifically the Atlantic Shores project, we also want to make clear that these projects should be done in a responsible way to protect the environment, wildlife including marine life, the ocean ecosystem, fishermen, and recreational use of our shores,” said Kin. “The use of a limited number of backbone connections shared by multiple offshore facilities to the grid onshore would minimize the environmental impact on our shore.”
A lot has been written about the number of whales that have washed ashore dead. We share these concerns but we must also follow the science. NOAA and other organizations have studied the recent dead whales and have not reported any evidence or links to the recent offshore planning activities.
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