The state of New Jersey remains committed to realizing 3,500 MW of offshore wind energy by 2030, stated New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy at this year’s International Offshore Wind Partnering Forum (IPF) 2018. He also said he’d like to see New Jersey powered by 100% clean energy by 2050.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Executive Director of the Business Network for Offshore Wind Liz Burdock at IPF 2018. Image credit: IPF 2018
The event, which took place April 3 to 6 in New Jersey, drew more than 700 attendees who gave Murphy a standing ovation as he gave the keynote speech for this year’s conference. Murphy also used his speech to announce that offshore wind developer and holder of a large lease off the coast of New Jersey Ørsted will be opening their first New Jersey state office in Atlantic City in April. The company’s proposed ocean wind project involves erecting wind turbines about 10 miles off the Atlantic City coast.
Walt Musial of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) chaired a day-long U.S. Offshore Wind Standards Initiative Working Group event, which involved developing national guidelines for issues like floating turbines, submarine cables, and ocean floor geology. The working groups’ goal is to establish U.S. national standards for all aspects of offshore wind farms within two to three years.
The forum also included an Offshore Wind Finance Seminar, during which finance experts spent time investigating the needs of the finance industry – particularly, how the case for investment into the U.S. offshore wind sector could be improved.
Additional forum speakers included New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy and New Jersey Board of Public Utilities President Joe Fiordaliso. Both shared their support of clean energy and their description of offshore energy as a “moral imperative” to help fight climate change. In addition, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke took to the stage to express his views of offshore wind and its connections to the grid as important elements of the U.S. energy infrastructure.
Zinke also announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will hold auctions for two wind energy areas off the coast of Massachusetts totaling 390,000 acres in the months to come, and that BOEM is publishing a Call for Information and Nominations for four proposed wind energy areas in the New York Bight area (Atlantic ocean between New Jersey to the west and Long Island to the north), which were presented as Areas for Consideration by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority last year.
IPF 2019 will take place April 9 – 11 in New York City.
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