December 17, 2021 — More than $26 million in fees paid for by developers of New Jersey’s offshore wind farms will go to the state in an agreement approved this week, and officials say the money will pay for research and monitoring of hundreds of turbines to be erected in the years ahead.
New Jersey will also soon join a multi-state organization that jointly researches the effects of the nascent offshore wind industry along the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard, according to a memorandum of understanding by the state’s Board of Public Utilities.
Both agreements approved Wednesday are the newest steps in New Jersey’s long path toward allowing construction of several wind farms miles off the coast, which eventually will provide 7,500 megawatts of renewable energy by 2035.
In June, the BPU approved the state’s second and third wind farm projects: a 110-turbine, 1,509-megawatt wind farm by Atlantic Shores, which is owned by European power companies Shell New Energies US and EDF Renewables North America, and a 82-turbine, 1,148-megawatt farm by Ørsted called Ocean Wind 2.