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Let's dive deep into the campaign against the so-called “high-risk” cables.
One of the biggest threats to American offshore wind is a handful of homeowners on the south Jersey shoreline spouting unproven theories about magnetic fields.
Within a year of forming, the activist group “Stop The High-Risk Cables” has galvanized local politicians against the transmission infrastructure being planned for wind turbines off the coast of New Jersey known as the Larrabee Pre-built Infrastructure. The transmission route, which will run a few miles from the beaches of Sea Girt, New Jersey, to a substation nearby, is expected to be a crucial landing zone for power from major offshore wind projects in south Jersey waters, including Atlantic Shores, a joint venture between EDF Renewables and Shell that received final permits from federal regulators last week.
The only problem: while state regulators have been busy planning the route for the transmission and selecting who will build it, opponents have managed to win the war of public opinion. Activists have clearly turned their neighbors against the plan, pushing the mayors of the four boroughs targeted for Pre-Built Infrastructure to come out against the project. And this weekend Jack Ciattarelli – who narrowly lost the race for the governor’s mansion last year and is running again in 2025 – joined activists rallying against the project and is now campaigning on ending the project and cable landings like it.
Since federal regulators control the waters, what this means is, unless Democrats hit the electoral jackpot over the next year, offshore wind in New Jersey could be screwed – even if Kamala Harris wins the White House.
What makes this more dire is, this isn’t any ol’ transmission. For other offshore wind projects like Empire Wind, states have forced developers to design and construct their own transmission landings, creating a somewhat disorganized situation resembling electrical spaghetti. New Jersey’s offshore wind transmission meanwhile has been studied for years and is supposed to minimize development on the shoreline. This means the combat over this cabling could decide the fates of multiple offshore wind projects – and the first major proactive plan to reduce beach-level environmental impacts that stymie offshore wind in the first place.
So I decided to dive deep into the campaign against the so-called “high-risk” cables. After a series of interviews with organizers and a mayor critical of the state’s processes, I’ve been left feeling this relatively small transmission project represents a true test for democracy’s role in climate action. Could a small band of organized individuals be all it takes to hold back decarbonization at the pace scientists say is necessary, no matter how many climate laws are passed?
Sea Girt resident Kimberly Paterson remembers when she first heard about the cables. Someone had left a postcard on her door about the project. Before that, the professional executive leadership trainer had devoted her activism to preserving maritime forests on the beach. Once made aware of the transmission cables though, she and her small coterie of environmentally-conscious neighbors got active.
Paterson said they also started getting looped in with an existing network of activists concerned about offshore wind infrastructure. Those activists included familiar characters to the fight over New Jersey offshore wind development.
People like Mike Dean of Save the East Coast and Cindy Zipf of Clean Ocean Action, who’ve spread theories without evidence about a spate of whale deaths being tied to pile drivers for offshore wind. She says her group’s work is focused on the cables, not offshore wind, despite the close allyship with these other actors. As she simply put it, “There’s a circle of people that you meet.”
“We do like to work with others, and communicate with others, but we’re not officially tied to any of those other groups.”
The group also started canvassing, making signage for homeowners, and holding public events. As calls for action grew, so too did the political focus on the area, as state legislators and members of Congress took up the issue.
“We have created an absolute firestorm here,” Paterson told me. ‘It is unbelievable what we’ve accomplished.”
The group is focused on what they believe to be the health risks of simply being near high-voltage power lines.
To understand their fears, think of an electric current going through a wire. The more current goes through a wire, the higher likelihood of electrical waves emanating from the current’s pathway. That’s where “electro-magnetic fields” come into play. These fields are all around us and even Earth emits them. It’s the result of an excess of energy.
The World Health Organization classifies even low amounts of electromagnetic fields as a possible carcinogen, citing studies around exposure and childhood leukemia rates. But as many environmental and health experts note, studies to date have not really linked cancer occurrences to prolonged exposure to these fields. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says the electro-magnetic fields created by cables for offshore wind “are well below the recommended threshold values for human exposure.” So like whales and wind, it’s something to watch out for, but there’s no evidence to date of a danger here.
Nonetheless, seeking to calm any resident’s fears of magnetic fields, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities last week convened their first public hearing within the planned development area.
At the event, numerous officials came and spoke to the project’s safety, including the executive director of the Board. They even played a long explanatory video from a consultant they hired to review the electro-magnetic fields that would come from the cables. The full presentation laid out numerous examples of what they said were similar underground and underwater transmission lines with magnetic emissions that had no discernable impact on public health, including lines in the New Jersey-New York region.
One person moved by the presentation’s efforts on magnetic fields was Mike Mangan, mayor of Manasquan, one of the boroughs that may be selected to host some of the transmission infrastructure. Mangan told me he joined with other mayors to press the state for more transparency on the cables at the behest of concerned constituents. But he didn’t know what the state knew about the magnetic fields.
“I’ll just be candid — I was ignorant on a lot of that,” he acknowledged. Mangan said he still has “a few very serious concerns” but “I think they addressed some of the bigger concerns,” including the magnetic fields.
I’ll admit, I felt the same. So far in The Fight, we’ve chronicled examples where there are at least somewhat reasonable concerns about renewable energy development – stuff like batteries sited in wildfire risk areas and solar farms in imperiled tortoise habitat. But in this case, I watched the entire presentation online and left thinking this was essentially a non-issue.
Yet Paterson says she was unconvinced by the presentation. The projects they’re citing aren’t comparable, she claims. And then she has a laundry list of other complaints about the potential cables.
Hearing her talk about the transmission, you’d think she just doesn’t want this built under any circumstances. So I asked her if, given her allies, the goal is to stop offshore wind. An avid wildlife painter, she says no, and that she’s “very strongly in support of alternative energy.”
Well, okay. Maybe it’s political or partisan then? I asked her who she’s voting for in this year’s presidential election. “I don’t like anyone in the election to be quite honest,” she confessed, self-identifying simply as a “libertarian.” She then added: “I love the idea of Robert F. Kennedy [Jr.] revolutionizing our health-care system. That makes me very excited.”
Last week, Heatmap published a risk index of the top 10 renewable energy projects worth watching for potential cancellation or major blowback to the energy transition.
We listed Atlantic Shores in the top five, primarily citing the project’s current role as a focal point for opponents to offshore wind up and down the Atlantic coastline. Hours after the risk index was published, Atlantic Shores received its final approval from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Despite that win, we’re leaving the project on the index because the cables have to be built too – and that stands to be a more stressful fight.
It wasn’t supposed to be hard. In 2021, New Jersey passed a law granting the Board of Public Utilities the authority to supersede local governments opposing easements and other permits for offshore wind transmission cables. But that law’s permissibility under the state constitution hasn’t been tested yet, thanks to the cancellation of Orsted’s Ocean Wind project, which was set to be the likeliest battleground over cables before Atlantic Shores.
State officials are expected in the coming weeks to lay out who will actually build the transmission infrastructure and the route it’ll take from Sea Girt to the Larrabee substation. Between the day of that announcement and the completion of construction, a lot can go awry. Donald Trump could win the presidency and, as opponents of offshore wind expect, revisit permitting decisions for projects like Atlantic Shores. Or a Republican like Jack Ciattarelli could win the governor’s mansion, and that person could take any number of steps to undermine the cables like leaving the local control law undefended in state court if it’s challenged.
All this risk to the energy transition, started by a handful of actors with unfounded claims about magnetic fields.
I asked Atlantic Shores for comment on the opposition movement. They did not get back to me.
However, I did hear from the New Jersey Offshore Wind Alliance, a consortium of developers trying to build offshore wind off the state coast. “While we are advocates of civil discourse and engagement from communities, we urge residents to be mindful of prevalent misinformation,” said Paulina O’Connor, executive director of the alliance, in a statement sent to me Tuesday evening.
“By following best practices in environmental science and engineering, such as proper siting, minimizing disruption during construction, and adherence to all state and federal regulations, this infrastructure can be safely and responsibly integrated into our communities and local and regional power grids to provide resilient and reliable power to New Jersey homes,” O’Connor continued.
I also heard from Anjuli Ramos-Busot, executive director of Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter, who contacted me last night after Atlantic Shores and the offshore wind alliance brought my reporting to their attention.
“Let us be clear, the microwave in your kitchen emits more electromagnetic currents than cables buried deep underground covered by insulation and concrete,” Ramos-Busot said in a statement. “This technology is vetted, goes through rigorous permitting standards, and is safe and responsible for both the environment and local communities.”
Candidly, I’m holding my breath on whether Sierra Club’s words will win over these concerned shore residents.
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The Trump administration appears to be advancing solar projects through the permitting process now.
After a temporary halt to permitting for solar projects, the Bureau of Land Management told me a few weeks ago that it had lifted the pause, but I had told you I would wait for confirmation to see whether projects could actually move through government permitting. On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management publicly confirmed that federal solar permitting can happen again, formally approving the Leeward Renewable’s Elisabeth solar project in Yuma County, Arizona – what appears to be the first utility-scale solar facility on federal acreage approved by the Trump administration.
The Elisabeth project is located in a remote part of southwestern Arizona in the Agua Caliente Solar Energy Zone, an area designated for solar energy leasing that has existed for more than a decade, and is adjacent to other large solar projects that have been previously approved according to BLM.
On the same day, BLM released a draft environmental review of a separate solar project in Arizona that the agency segregated land for late last year at the same time as Elisabeth: the Avantus’ Pinyon solar-plus-storage project, which is open for public comment through late May. Tucked on page 37 of that draft document was a list of other solar projects in the nearby vicinity on federal lands that have yet to enter the federal permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act, which BLM dubbed as “reasonably foreseeable” impacts to the cumulative environment.
The fact BLM is willing to admit other solar projects could advance later on is significant after the sputtering seen in the earliest days of the Trump administration. We’d seen hints of progress seeping through updates to BLM webpages. In mid April, we reported the agency quietly updated the timetable for the Esmerelda 7 mega-solar project in Nevada to say the agency would issue a final decision on the project this summer. I took a peek through the BLM data and found other examples of the same thing, including the Bonanza solar farm, which is now expected to receive its final environmental impact statement in June according to the project website.
BLM has also moved forward with transmission lines on federal lands that would go to solar projects off federal lands, indicating a level of agnosticism about connecting solar farms to the grid if the energy is generated on private property.
It’s still not clear whether solar permits will be a steady trickle for the foreseeable future or if this form of renewable energy could benefit from the Trump administration’s desires to maximize energy generation. Take all of this with a grain of salt because at any moment, a news cycle or disgruntled legislator could steal the president’s ear and make him angry at solar power.
But in times as chaotic as these for U.S. renewables developers, we’ll take this ray of sunshine.
And more of the week’s top news in renewable energy conflicts.
1. Hampden County, Massachusetts – Disgruntled residents in the small city of Westfield have won their fight against a Jupiter Power battery storage project.
2. Staten Island, New York – Speaking of people booing battery storage, the battle over BESS on Staten Island is potentially turning into major litigation.
3. Montgomery County, Maryland – County planners have approved a small solar farm on agricultural lands in the small D.C. exurb of Rockville surprising even the project’s developer Chaberton Energy.
4. Mecklenburg County, Virginia – A 90-acre RWE solar project has been rejected for the second time by county officials despite the developer slimming down the project size in response to local complaints.
5. Licking County, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court is allowing Open Road Renewables’ utility-scale Harvey Solar project to proceed over objections from angry neighbors.
6. Adams County, Illinois – It’s not all sunshine and roses in the Midwest though, as even a relatively tiny solar farm is struggling to get approval in rural Illinois.
7. Pierce County, Wisconsin – An AES utility-scale solar farm is getting significant pushback from surrounding residents over farmland impacts.
8. Dickinson County, Iowa – Invenergy has removed some turbines from its Red Rock Wind Energy Center in a bid to try and overcome a vocal contingent of opposition in the county.
9. Cedar County, Iowa – Elsewhere in the Hawkeye State, an Iowa farmer is suing Nordex claiming that a wind turbine fire damaged his wheat crop.
10. Lincoln County, Oklahoma – A battery storage facility proposed by Black Mountain is the subject of an investigative news article about opposition to BESS in Oklahoma.
11. Santa Barbara County, California – The backlash to the Moss Landing battery fire has now led the central coast city of Santa Maria to ban new battery storage facilities.
A conversation with Jason Marshall of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
This week’s conversation is about transmission. It may have been lost in the shuffle but earlier this week, the state of Massachusetts led a coalition of Northeast states in releasing a joint strategic action plan on transmission planning. We haven’t covered transmission fights too much yet in The Fight (that’ll change soon, stay tuned). So I wanted to learn more about how and why this plan came together, especially given how crucial wires will be to connecting renewables to the grid there. So I got on the horn with Jason Marshall, deputy secretary and special counsel for federal and regional energy affairs in Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. We wound up chatting about how significant this plan is – and a little bit about folk music too.
The following transcript is a slightly abridged version for clarity.
To start – why does this strategic action plan exist?
The strategic action plan has actually been about two years in the making and it’s something that the Healy-Driscoll administration has actually led from our office, knowing there’s a gap in transmission planning.
How transmission planning works today is it focuses on facilities developed within a specific planning region but Massachusetts – and all states – don’t exist as energy islands and we should be collaborating more closely across all regions. We saw a gap in identifying needs in the system, where we were only looking at needs within our singular region, and not looking at whether there are more cost effective ways to solve a reliability issue by enhancing ties with neighbors. That was basically it. There’s not a routine process that exists right now to do interregional planning.
Help me understand how transmission planning helps mitigate conflicts in developing transmission?
Planning in general helps mitigate conflict. You’re being proactive and have transparent procedures developed and put in place for how the process works.
This goes back to what the gap is. Because we don’t have formalized rules to do transmission planning, to the extent there are interregional transmission lines that our state develops, it’s happening on an ad hoc basis. It’s a project-by-project type of a process.
What are the conflicts most crucial to manage in transmission siting?
So taking a step back, this strategic action plan is not focused on siting and permitting. Massachusetts passed a landmark law last year that significantly reformed the siting and permitting process in [the state]. But that being said, this goes back to one of your earlier questions: if you have formalized procedures in place, in a set of rules filed with regulators, that’s a way to make sure there’s an efficient process with transparency at the earliest possible stage.
Walk me through how the plan does that.
There’s several components. In our view, the plan is really anchored by a request for information we hope to issue as early as this summer inviting project developers to submit design concepts to this group of states involved in the effort. I don’t think anything like that has ever been done before. The other part of that [request] is work the states plan to do, inviting stakeholders and market participants, to participate in a discussion on cost allocation and how the states may divide the costs of any interregional project that might come to fruition through this process. These are two really important steps that create formality around this.
Briefly, on that point, and I think this is important: typically the way transmission planning is done, you come up with a set of rules and then you implement those rules. But because those rules don’t exist, this group of states is collaborative and doing this in reverse, using potential real projects as a catalyst to explore broader reforms.
The last question is just a broader one about transmission and the power mix. A pretty crucial aspect of Massachusetts’ expected renewable energy portfolio is supposed to be offshore wind. We’re dealing with hurdles in that space right now. How does that impact your transmission planning and the power grid?
If you look through the plan, what will come across is that the effort is broader than any one specific resource. That’s purposeful. This group of states recognizes the many benefits that transmission provides, from increasing access to markets for lower price energy to reliability and resiliency. And it can include connecting new resources, and it’s not specific to any resource type.
That being said, like all resources, offshore wind could potentially be enabled through the work we’re doing. A number of resources could potentially be facilitated through this work. One of the components of the plan is trying to standardize equipment design used for transmission which is a real technical issue but it has real consequences in terms of facilitating a network transmission grid, making sure the equipment is interoperable and we can talk to each other.
To conclude, a fun question: what was the last song you listened to?
The last song? It was “Automatic” by The Lumineers. I love the new album, they’re coming to Fenway Park in July and I’m taking my daughter to the show.