Plans for a wind farm off the coast of Long Beach Island are on hold.
Leading Light Wind is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to give it a pause through Dec. 20, the Associated Press reported.
The company said it has had difficulty securing a manufacturer for turbine blades for the project and is currently without a supplier, the news agency reported.
Wes Jacobs, the project director and vice president of Offshore Wind Development at Invenergy — one of the project’s partners — said it is seeking to hit the pause button “in light of industry-wide shifts in market conditions.”
“As one of the largest American-led offshore wind projects in the country, we remain committed to delivering this critically important energy project, as well as its significant economic and environmental benefits, to the Garden State,” he said in a statement Tuesday night.
Opponents of offshore wind celebrated the news.
“Yet another offshore wind developer is finding out for themselves that building massive power installations in the ocean is a fool’s errand, especially off the coast of New Jersey,” said Protect Our Coast NJ. “We hope Leading Light follows the example of Orsted and leaves New Jersey before any further degradation of the marine and coastal environment can take place.”
Leading Light was one of two projects chosen in January by the state utilities board. But just three weeks after that approval, one of three major turbine manufacturers, GE Vernova, said it would not announce the kind of turbine Invenergy planned to use in the Leading Light Project, according to the filing with the utilities board.
A turbine made by manufacturer Vestas was deemed unsuitable for the project, and the lone remaining manufacturer, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, told Invenergy in June “that it was substantially increasing the cost of its turbine offering.”
“As a result of these actions, Invenergy is currently without a viable turbine supplier,” it wrote in its filing.
The project, from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE, would be built 40 miles (65 kilometers) off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.
