EPA pulls permit from New Jersey offshore wind project

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In another blow to New Jersey’s nascent offshore wind industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has pulled a Clean Air Act permit for the Atlantic Shores project, citing President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order hitting the pause button on offshore wind. In “remanding” the permit, construction on the project cannot begin without additional review and approval by the agency.

Attorneys for Atlantic Shores had argued that the executive order on offshore wind did not apply to what they say is the final permit issued by the EPA under former President Joe Biden in September.

“Atlantic Shores is disappointed by the EPA’s decision to pull back its fully executed permit as regulatory certainty is critical to deploying major energy projects,” Atlantic Shores spokesman Terance Kelly wrote in an email. “Atlantic Shores stands ready to deliver on the promise of American energy dominance and has devoted extensive time and resources to follow a complex, multi-year permitting process, resulting in final project approvals that conform with the law.”

But the judge who issued the order, after Atlantic Shores declined to “voluntarily remand” its permit, wrote that the Environmental Appeals Board, an administrative tribunal that reviews EPA decisions, has “broad discretion” when pulling a permit.

The project’s Clean Air Act permit relates to air pollutants from the wind farm’s construction, including intensive pile driving necessary to install monopiles into the seabed, which are the poles that hold the turbines. The proposal includes 195 turbines that would sit about nine miles off the coast of Atlantic City, near the Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge. Industrial activities near a refuge have specific permit requirements.

Save Long Beach Island, a group that opposes the project, filed a petition challenging aspects of the permit. The group questioned the modeling that estimated the emissions, the extent of the particulate matter pollution and the potential emissions from decommissioning the site decades into the future.

“So the numbers they came up with [in the permit application], we just don’t know if they actually represent the real world situation,” Bob Stern of Save Long Beach Island said. “We felt that these approvals had a lot of significant flaws, that the science was not sound, that the mathematics being used to calculate impact was not sound, and frankly the reviews were biased towards promoting the project.”

Just two days before the Atlantic Shores permit was pulled, however, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced 31 potential rollbacks of environmental rules, including a rule aimed at reducing haze at wildlife refuges, and a rule that limits emissions of an air pollutant known as PM 2.5.

“The United States has made significant gains in improving visibility in national parks and other wildlife areas,” Zeldin said in a statement. “The Regional Haze Program was never intended to be the justification for shutting down every power plant and industrial sector in the country. It’s time to restore sanity and purpose to the program.”

Stern said he’s unclear how that would impact this particular case. But his group has written to the Department of Energy with suggestions on how these types of offshore projects should be permitted in the future, including increased public input before siting gets approval.

Offshore wind proponents, however, say pulling a permit like this is unprecedented and could have further implications for the five current offshore wind projects that have received permits and are moving forward.

“It is …an action that the Trump administration has taken unilaterally, even after the Atlantic Shores project underwent extensive and rigorous evaluation by the EPA and multiple other agencies,” said Kris Oleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind. “It constitutes a blatant case of federal government “taking.” The degree of interference by the Trump administration in private market activities and the capitalist system is both alarming and troubling.”

Oleth said even those projects that have begun construction are vulnerable under this interpretation of Trump’s executive order. In cases of large industrial projects, companies often have to go back to the regulatory agencies to amend permits, so in that case, Oleth said the agencies could simply block the projects mid-construction.

Those under construction include Vineyard Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind off the coast of Massachusetts, Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, Empire Wind 1 off New York and Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

Generally, pulling permits like this is unusual, said environmental attorney Steven Miano, but given the executive order and recent actions by the Trump administration, he said he isn’t surprised. But it does make it more difficult for businesses to plan.

“Even oil and gas operations, they don’t know what the current or immediate future regulations are going to be,” Miano said. “So it’s hard to run their business.”

Still, some defended the action as legally sound. The executive order issued by Trump required the EPA to remand the permit, said Michael Krancer, an environmental attorney who ran Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection under former Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican.

“This permit was not evaluated under the conditions of the Presidential Memorandum,” Krancer said in an email. “[The] decision here is 100% solid and irrefutable,” he said.

Atlantic Shores said it is still weighing its options, but it could appeal to a federal court.