Another offshore wind project on the East Coast is being quietly killed.
Legal counsel for the Leading Light Wind offshore project filed a letter on Nov. 7 to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities informing the regulator it no longer sees any way to complete construction and wants to pull the plug.
“The Board is well aware that the offshore wind industry has experienced economic and regulatory conditions that have made the development of new offshore wind projects extremely difficult,” counsel Colleen Foley wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by Heatmap News. “Like many other industry participants, the Company has faced a series of obstacles in the development of the LLW Project including supply chain, equipment and vendor challenges as well as changing regulatory requirements, to name but a few of the issues the Company has confronted.”
Leading Light was going to be built about 35 miles off the coast of New Jersey. It was awarded a renewable energy certificate from the state in January 2024 and was expected to provide roughly 2.4 gigawatts of electricity to the grid, which would have made it one of the largest renewable energy projects in the country and enough, the developers said, to power a million homes.
That certificate, known as an OREC, came with state financial assistance but also required developers Invenergy and energyRe to meet specific project milestones. Yet in addition to facing supply chain issues both companies had been unable to pursue federal permitting because of the Trump administration’s policy on offshore wind. And for months, they had submitted extension after extension to filing a motion binding it legally to complete construction of the project.
But now Leading Light is dead for the foreseeable future. “The company regrets this decision but does not see a pathway forward for the LLW Project on this OREC award and looks forward to the future for possible solicitations,” Foley stated.
This means New Jersey’s offshore wind horizons are incredibly bleak, especially after Shell dumped its stake in the defunct Atlantic Shores offshore wind project last month. Almost all of New Jersey’s offshore wind contracts have now fallen apart, including those for the Ocean Wind, and there is little chance of Attentive Energy receiving federal permits under the current administration.
Only one project is now set to be operational off the New Jersey coast: Empire Wind. But it’s unclear if Empire will ever provide electrons to New Jersey itself since its only contract is with New York regulators. (It remains to be seen whether Empire’s developer, Equinor, will bid into New Jersey’s markets for the project’s second phase.)
It’s also important to consider the timing. On Nov. 4, New Jersey voters were swept up in a blue wave – but one that didn’t really hit many coastal areas, where a large majority of voters remained in the GOP camp. Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli focused enormously on fighting offshore wind during his campaign, going so far as to sell anti-wind merch. So one can imagine a world where the coastline was part of a blue wave and an offshore wind developer wouldn’t immediately pull out of the state, but that’s not a world we live in.
When reached for comment on whether the project might still be built, Invenergy simply said, “Please refer to the filing.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect comment from Invenergy and clarify Attentive Energy’s current status.
Emily Pontecorvo contributed to this article.
