Shell and EDF venture submits bid for New Jersey offshore wind farm

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, a 50:50 joint venture between Shell and EDF, has submitted a proposal to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities as part of the state’s third offshore wind solicitation.

This gives further support to the state’s ambitious goal of reaching 11,000 MW of offshore wind energy by 2040. New Jersey has set a goal of reaching 100% clean energy by 2035.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has already awarded Atlantic Shores a contract to develop a 1.51 GW offshore wind project to supply power to over 700,000 homes. The contract, awarded in 2021, was the largest single project in New Jersey and the third-largest in the US at the time. Construction is supposed to start in 2024 while power generation will be in two phases – in 2027 and 2028.

If selected, Atlantic Shores would supply renewable energy through the proposed project to hundreds of thousands of New Jersey households beyond the 1,51 GW already being delivered as part of Atlantic Shores Project 1.

The Shell-EDF JV has three offshore wind energy lease areas totalling more than 400 square miles under active development. Two of the lease areas are located approximately 10-20 miles off the coast of New Jersey between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light, with a third lease area located in an area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the New York Bight.

Atlantic Shores did not provide many details regarding the proposed project, but it did claim that the proposal was the most “make-ready” proposal available in the third offshore wind solicitation.

It also submitted a prebuild infrastructure (PBI) bid which, according to the JV, provides a measure of certainty for on-time clean energy infrastructure delivery that can also accommodate multiple construction timelines from other projects selected in this solicitation or future ones.