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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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And what renewables can learn from it.
A sprawling multi-state carbon pipeline appears easier to permit and build than wind and solar farms in red states, despite comments the president-elect or his team may have said on the campaign trail. And the answer has to do with more than just the potential benefits for oil and gas.
The Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline network would criss-cross five states – Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas – connecting dozens of ethanol “biorefinery” plants to carbon sequestration sites for storing CO2 captured while producing the agri-fuel. On paper Summit has its work cut out for it in ways not dissimilar to the troubles facing solar and wind. Land use issues, ecological concerns, the whole lot. And its work has become controversial amongst a myriad of opposition groups I often write about like rural farmers and, of course, conspiratorial NIMBYs – chief among them Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., two members of the incoming Trump administration.
But Ramaswamy and RFK Jr.’s presence is providing cold comfort compared to the selection of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum – a vocal supporter of the project – to be Interior Secretary.
“We’re screwed,” wrote Dawn Shepard, a North Dakotan opposed to the project, on Facebook after the selection was announced. “He will get all Carbon Capture projects approved. I thought Republicans and Trump, included, didn’t believe in climate change. Trump’s not keeping his word.”
It’s not exactly that simple, and its debatable whether Summit’ll actually help address climate change, but the premise is true: Trump’s election may just assure the pipeline’s completion, if all things go its way.
“Those appointments are definitely a big thumb on the scale of the pipeline going through,” said Mark Hefflinger of Bold Alliance, one of the activist networks fighting the pipeline project.
In my conversations with activists and the company, it doesn’t appear there’s any easy way for the Interior Department – which oversees all federal land use – to grease all of the skids for Summit, so to speak. But there are a number of factors in its favor now: the pipeline will still require Army Corps of Engineers permits for water body crossings and those tend to require environmental reviews that heavily involve Interior. At the same time, all sides expect the Interior Secretary and likely Energy Secretary Chris Wright (an oil magnate) to champion beneficial Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for carbon capture, sequestration, and utilization in tax talks early next year.
All the while, most state-level regulators have finished or are completing approvals of the pipeline, with the exception of South Dakota where Summit on Tuesday resubmitted its permitting application to the state’s Public Utilities Commission. While I’ve been told the company didn’t substantially adjust its routing in response to the failed ballot initiative, executives certainly did change plans to elide a repeat rejection from the commission after it said no to pipeline plans last year.
“Our efforts involved spending more than a year driving county roads, knocking on doors, and having meaningful, face-to-face conversations with landowners,” Sabrina Zenor, Summit’s director of stakeholder engagement and corporate communications, told me. “These conversations guided our approach.”
There’s a lot that could still go awry for Summit. They could lose legal battles in Iowa that send them back to the drawing board in a crucial hub for corn and ethanol and where public opinion may be souring on the developer. South Dakota could be its own ball of wax, given how passionate the opposition in the state is.
Trump’s comments on the matter have been vague, indicating he’s … well, being very Trump about this. “Well, you know, we’re working on that,” Trump said when asked about the pipeline at an Iowa primary event last year. “And you know, we had a plan to totally — it’s such a ridiculous situation, isn’t it? But we had a plan, and we would have instituted that plan, and it was all ready, but we will get it — if we win, that’s going to be taken care of. That will be one of the easy things we do.”
Ultimately it may be with many issues: whoever’s in the room last with Trump could decide the pipeline’s fate.
But regardless, developers of renewables and battery storage could take away a few lessons from the pipeline network.
Walt Bones, the former head of South Dakota’s Agriculture Department, is one of the landowners currently negotiating a financial agreement for land use with Summit. He’s a farmer, and like many farmers we write about here at The Fight, he doesn’t support building stuff on or near his land if there’s going to be an impact on his crop yields. He told me that he believes the opposition in the state is largely the product of a rush to build by an over-zealous company seeking the maximum benefit from federal tax credits. And they spooked people, producing widespread skepticism of the pipeline.
“Summit did not help themselves any,” he said.
Now of course, there’s lots of concerns about CO2 pipelines’ environmental impacts and the risk of them going, well, kablooey. But unlike how some farmers skeptically view agri-voltaics (e.g. dual use solar), the thought of a pipeline beneath the earth gives Bones – a former farm regulator – no qualms. And the reasoning is simple: He doesn’t believe the pipeline, which will be buried, will impact his farming at all. And ethanol – unlike solar or wind – will feed demand for more farming.
“Basically zero impact to our land. We’ll still be able to farm over it. We’ll still be able to graze over it with our cows,” he said. “I know what the value is … [it’ll] guarantee the future viability of corn.”
So where does this leave us? It’s likely Bones doesn’t represent every farmer. But maybe there’d be a benefit in renewable developers focusing on finding ever-more ways to create a fly-wheel where solar and wind energy generation creates more business for farmers. Clearly, the sheer footprint of a utility scale solar or wind project can be more impactful than a thin pipeline crossing a property.
And I guess they should also make more politically powerful friends in the Dakotas.
1. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – The Biden administration is rushing to finish permitting Ocean Winds’ Southcoast Wind project, a joint venture between EDP Renewables and Engie, before Donald Trump returns to the White House. Questions remain as to whether it can be done.
2. Pittsburgh County, Oklahoma – Momentum is building for an anti-wind moratorium in this Oklahoma county home to multiple proposed wind projects.
3. Benton County, Washington – Remember when we told you advocates were going to sue over Washington state approving the Horse Heaven wind farm project? It’s happening.
4. Branch County, Michigan – When a solar farm and a transmission project are the ones fighting, who wins? In the Mitten State, we’re about to find out.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Ohio, a wind farm got a local approval for once: NextEra’s Swan Lake project.
In New Mexico, a county has approved the tax agreement for Orsted’s Blackwater solar project.
In Pennsylvania, a local newspaper’s editorial board has come out against activists that have “put the kibosh to more than a dozen proposed solar farm projects throughout the region.”
In West Virginia, state regulators have approved a Nedpower Mount Storm wind farm after the company reduced its size by more than 40 percent.
In Virginia, local officials are bracing for Virginia Beach traffic jams over constructing the Dominion Energy Coastal Virginia offshore wind project.And more on this week’s top policy and energy news.
Trump’s energy direction – We’re far enough into the Trump 2.0 transition that I can offer a few specific insights having covered him the first go-around.
New hydrogen hub backing – The Energy Department has announced more than $2.2 billion in cost-sharing agreements with two more hydrogen hubs in the Midwest and Gulf Coast.
Here’s what else I’m watching…
A Virginia Circuit Court has struck down Governor Glenn Youngkin’s attempt to withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed new legislation creating new tax breaks and financing for offshore wind as she defiantly insists the industry will continue to grow during the Trump 2.0 era.