04/07/2018

EDF Renewable Energy Backs New Jersey Offshore Wind Industry

As a direct response to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s goal to promote the development of 3,500 MW of offshore wind by signing Executive Order #8 in January 2018, EDF Renewable Energy (EDF RE), a subsidiary of the EDF EN Group, who has been preparing for the New Jersey market to open up since 2010, launched an initiative to address this goal.

Based on a survey of the market, the first step is to sponsor a near-term project, which will enable New Jersey to gain a leadership position in the offshore wind industry. Accordingly, EDF RE has entered into a preliminary agreement with Fishermen’s Energy to acquire their fully developed 24-megawatt (MW) Project sited off the coast of Atlantic City.

“EDF RE is excited by the Governor’s ambitious plans to be a leader in the offshore wind space and we are eager to work with Fishermen’s Energy to provide an immediate opportunity for New Jersey to gain the benefit of local investment, jobs, infrastructure, and experience,“ commented Doug Copeland, EDF Renewable Energy’s Regional Project Development Manager. “The U.S. offshore wind industry is poised for tremendous growth and we believe an early stage project will help New Jersey develop the infrastructure to support this rapidly growing industry.”

The project will generate skilled offshore wind construction and operations jobs, positioning New Jersey’s workforce to build gigawatts of wind projects off New Jersey’s coast and up-and-down the Atlantic coast. These workers will be the first wave of the nearly 40,000 jobs¹ that are expected to be created in the U.S., building the 8 GW of offshore wind that’s currently in the project pipeline.

Gloucester County Freeholder Director Robert M. Damminger supports the project stating, “As one of the only major ports in New Jersey able to facilitate the large volume of shipping and construction activities under the Governor’s ambitious offshore wind power plan, we are a proponent of the immediate opportunity to evaluate our facility and labor force in order to identify and upgrade infrastructure and workforce training. This will allow the Port of Paulsboro to take advantage of the subsequent waves of large-scale offshore development in the region.”

EDF RE brings strategic procurement capabilities throughout the entire supply chain. The Company will leverage its procurement team, having supply agreements in place for more than 9 GW of onshore wind in North America throughout the past decade, precise skill and long-term relationships with suppliers to source cost of energy leading technologies.

Kirk Meche, President and CEO of Gulf Island Fabrication Inc., a worldwide leader in project management, construction, and servicing of offshore facilities within the energy sector, commented, “This Atlantic City project is needed to establish New Jersey’s foothold in this new industry. The project can become a model for combining the Gulf Coast’s offshore fabrication experience with New Jersey’s labor, contractors and port infrastructure.”

The Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters is pleased to support the Fishermen’s Energy wind project off the coast of Atlantic City saying, “A project like this one will create new jobs and hundreds of thousands of manhours for our dock builders, divers, welders and millwrights. That’s money that goes directly into the pockets of thousands of hardworking men and women in New Jersey and will be spent in Southern New Jersey communities helping to boost local economies.”

“New Jersey is well positioned to become one of the first states to capture the energy and job-creating potential of U.S. offshore wind,” said Nancy Sopko, Director, Offshore Wind, American Wind Energy Association. “The state will greatly benefit from growing the offshore wind industry, and EDF Renewable Energy’s proven wind development track record makes it a strong partner as the state begins to harness this new ocean energy resource.”

EDF RE anticipates the project will further serve to improve environmental management by providing a laboratory for testing of new avian monitoring and marine mammal sensing technologies. This unique and valuable opportunity will ultimately inform cost reduction for future projects.

Hanson Wood, EDF Renewable Energy’s Director of Special Projects, adds, “EDF RE looks forward to applying our innovation and investment to help Governor Murphy progress the promising New Jersey offshore wind sector that will ultimately provide much needed reliability and relief to the regional grid. Our extensive experience with projects in the UK, Belgium and France, will enable us to promptly contribute to the offshore industry of New Jersey and deploy capital investment to bring this first project online by 2020.”

¹ BVG Associates, LTD. (2017). U.S. Job Creation in Offshore Wind A Report for the Roadmap Project for Multi-State Cooperation on Offshore Wind(Report No. 17-22). Retrieved from Northeast Wind Center website: www.northeastwindcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/US-job-creation-in-offshore-wind.pdf