Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) today welcomed news that Orsted, a  Danish company, has announced that it has “ceased development” of two offshore wind turbine projects—Ocean Wind 1 and 2—off the coast of New Jersey.

             According to an Orsted press release, Orsted cited “anticipated impairments on its US portfolio of up to DKK 16 billion” or approximately $2.266 billion and said that “the US offshore wind projects have experienced further negative developments from adverse impacts relating to supply chains, increased interest rates…”

             Smith said, “Turns out that despite huge taxpayer subsidies and credible predictions of big increases to ratepayers, Orsted has concluded that they will still lose money.”

             Smith said, “Orsted’s decision was a first step in exposing the economic unsustainability and environmental dangerousness of ocean wind turbines—each the size of the Chrysler Building in New York City—and Orsted’s pulling out of the deal may help slow and eventually halt similar projects off New Jersey’s coast.”

             “Orsted’s withdrawal marks a victory for local residents, environmentalists, and NJ commercial and recreational fishermen who have worked alongside me and Congressman Jeff Van Drew to expose the dangers inherent in the massive ocean industrialization plans slated for the Jersey Shore,” Smith said. “It also marks a major failure for the Biden and Murphy Administrations who tried to push it through and throw billions of taxpayer dollars at the unsound, improperly vetted projects.”

             According to Smith: “Offshore wind development will have a catastrophic impact on sea mammals including whales and dolphins, it will destroy commercial and recreational fishing, it will harm tourism and it will significantly weaken and degrade radar making ship navigation and piloting jets, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft incredibly dangerous. Offshore wind turbines are a serious threat to national security.”

             The House of Representatives on July 20 passed an amendment authored by Smith that requires President Biden or his designee to certify that offshore wind projects “will not weaken, degrade, interfere with, or nullify the capability of radar relied upon the Federal Aviation Administration or the Armed Forces.”  That legislation is pending in the US Senate.

             “BOEM’s radar interference analysis from August of 2020 stated, ‘The research team found that the proposed and hypothetical wind farms are within the line of sight of 36 radar systems, indicating that they will generate interference to these radars under normal atmospheric conditions’ and ‘future offshore wind energy installations on the Atlantic coast may impact land-based radar systems,’” said Smith.

            Another study cited by Smith stated: “Offshore wind turbines may pose unique impacts to coastal radar systems given the differences in propagation of radar signals over the ocean versus land, as well as the larger size of offshore wind turbines compared to land-based wind turbines.” That finding came from 2017 Interagency Ground-Based Coastal Air Surveillance Wind Turbine-Radar Interference Vulnerability Study.

            Smith pointed to a third study by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine from 2022 that found “wind turbine generator mitigation techniques have not been substantially investigated, implemented, matured, or deployed.”

             Last March, the House passed another Smith amendment—with broad bipartisan support in a vote of 244-189—requiring an independent investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) into the impacts that the wind turbines will have on the environment, fishing industry, military operations, navigational safety and more.

             The audit by the congressional watchdog—which Smith secured in June—is ongoing and will be released soon.

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