Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now our Climate Story of the Week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. We're doing that all this year. Today, the state of wind energy projects in New York and New Jersey. New Jersey set a goal to become one of the greatest states in the country for wind through the use of offshore wind projects. In 2019, Governor Murphy awarded Danish developer Ørsted, the largest offshore wind project in American history, but here, four years later, the developer has pulled out of those projects, threatening the state's ambitious goals.

The biggest wind developer in New York State is called Equinor. It's been reported that that company lobbied hard to allow the city of Long Beach on the South Shore to approve a transmission line through a particular park, but Governor Hochul vetoed that move. We're going to talk about wind projects coming and going at what might yet still come and the politics of all of it with Marie French and Ry Rivard, who cover energy and the environment for Politico in New York and New Jersey, respectively. Marie, Ry, welcome to WNYC.

Marie French: It's great to be here, Brian.

Ry Rivard: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Marie, let me start with you because we've been talking more on the show recently about the cancellation of the Ørsted wind farms off New Jersey. Looking first at Long Beach, what happened there?

Marie French: That's a really interesting case. It's Empire Wind 1. It would have plugged in through that community, building the transmission line to connect to the grid there. Essentially, what happened is, you can read it a lot of ways, but I think one of the interpretations here is that the local community just really didn't want to see that. There was a lot of public opposition from some of the local elected officials, including Democrats, and Hochul said she was listening to the community.

They don't want that transmission line where Equinor had proposed it initially, and so she vetoed the bill that would have allowed the city of Long Beach to start negotiating on that. The bill itself wouldn't have actually approved the line. It still needed and needs Article VII approval, which is a state-level permit, and it would have needed additional sign-off from the local officials.

Brian Lehrer: What's the source of community opposition in Long Beach?

Marie French: I think there's a lot of things. There's concern about offshore wind, generally, there's concern about the disruption that this type of construction causes, questions about really what the benefits for the local community would have been, and what the impacts of the construction of this transmission line and the substation associated with the project would have been.

Brian Lehrer: Would the windmills themselves have been visible from the beach?

Marie French: For this project, no, I don't believe so. A lot of these sites are far enough offshore that you might be able to see them on a very clear day, but generally, they're these-- especially some of the later projects are far enough offshore that they aren't going to be visible. A lot of the environmental advocacy community that really pushed hard for this bill, seeing it as really critical to moving these projects forward, basically said, once Hochul vetoed it, that it's up to the company to figure out another way to move this forward.

The offshore wind industry is facing challenges. This veto was really only sort of one issue that's facing this project. The developers had asked for additional money to continue building the project and moving it forward, but the state said no. Now we're in a state where there's a lot of uncertainty about the future of these projects.

Brian Lehrer: Was there something about some parkland onshore that would have been affected?

Marie French: For the transmission line, yes, that was the alienation piece of this. To alienate parkland in the state, you need a state bill to do that. That was the issue at play for the local approval and the state-level law to do that.

Brian Lehrer: Did Governor Hochul recently also approve some other wind projects, so she's sending mixed or complex signals on this?

Marie French: Yes. Definitely, there's a lot of complicated factors at play, but she did approve three contracts with three very large offshore wind projects, more than 1,000 megawatts each, and said essentially these projects will be completed by 2030. They'll help support the state's environmental and renewable energy goals by that time.

Now the state's energy authority is also looking at a new solicitation or bidding process to see if they can salvage some of these earlier projects that have said they're no longer financially viable or potentially replace them with other projects.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we want to take your calls on this. Obviously, are you a resident of a community along any of our area's shorelines and have an opinion about wind farms off Long Island, off the Jersey Shore, even anywhere else? 212-433-WNYC. You don't have to be a resident of shore communities, but we definitely want to hear your voice from shore communities. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Why is it so controversial, especially if you can't see the windmills from the beach? Who's opposed to this and why? We've talked on this show about the issues about windmill construction killing whales being disinformation according to marine biologists, so what's your issue if you oppose wind farms off the coast of where you live or anyone else on any side of this from anywhere? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 for Marie French from Politico New York, and Ry Rivard from Politico New Jersey, covering the story.

Ry, your story begins in the long-running sibling rivalry between New Jersey and New York. The Garden State finally thought it had the upper hand, meaning with respect to wind production?

Ry Rivard: And clean energy, generally. When Governor Phil Murphy was campaigning in 2017 to succeed Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, Murphy, a Democrat, Murphy made clean energy one of his major issues. He's set, at this point, some of the most ambitious clean energy targets of any large state in the country. He, and Cuomo was governor of New York, and now that Hochul is governor of New York, and Newsom and Jerry Brown in California, and Jay Inslee to some extent in Washington all had a one-upping each other on clean energy goals and how ambitious they could be.

Murphy, I think, had a pretty good shot at transforming New Jersey faster than these states could transform themselves, but I think that's really in question now after these two projects were canceled last week.

Brian Lehrer: You write, "If President Joe--" Oh, that's I think-- Marie, is this you? "If President Joe Biden ever wants to meet his energy goals for the nation, New York and other Northeastern states are going to have to pick up New Jersey's slack," I guess, after what Ry was just describing.

Marie French: Yes. I think there's a lot of pressure on New York and on the other Northeastern states that have their own offshore wind goals as well to move forward with these projects, but they also have to balance the costs that are going to be borne by ratepayers in all these states.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Charles in Manhattan who grew up in Long Beach. Again, for those of you who don't know, Long Beach, a South Shore community on Long Island, pretty close to the city. Charles, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Charles: Oh, hi, Brian. Hi, Marie and Ry. Can we clarify first that the transmission line from Empire Wind that would have gone under the seabed, it would go under Long Beach. There would be some transitory construction briefly under the beach and then going along or underneath the road east to west, and then cutting through and under Reynolds Channel into Island Park where it would come onshore and into Oceanside to meet the east-west trunk transmission line.

Any local impact of the transmission line would have been brief and temporary, but there is a fair point that what is the benefit to Long Beach other than contributing Long Beach's share to dealing with global climate change that ravaged the city? I was there during Superstorm Sandy, and maybe the locals seem to have forgotten that. My last point is that if we had a really robust carbon price, not the small amount in the regional greenhouse gas trading system, but something on the order of $100 a ton, which is what the European Union has, then the profitability of the Empire Wind Project would be so much greater to the tune of at least $200 million a year in higher revenue because the price of fossil fuel electricity would be raised, and so Equinor would be able to charge more in selling to the grid.

The company would be able to spread all kinds of monetary benefits to Long Beach Island Park and Oceanside and energize the broad middle, which has been silent on this, to be able to overcome the selfish and myopic, nimby pressure, and get the project moving as well as get it back into the black.

Brian Lehrer: Charles, how do you understand the opposition in your hometown? If the windmills wouldn't be visible from the beach and the transmission lines would be underground and the construction of them would be brief and temporary, as you say, how do you understand the real cause of the opposition in Long Beach?

Charles: Well, first, Brian, I think we should be clear that even though the wind farm would be 15 miles offshore from Long Beach, they're so high. Wind farms, wind turbines have to be really tall to catch the full energy of the wind. That's what makes their economics work. Yes, on a really clear day, and we'll have more clear days with less fossil fuels and more wind and solar, then yes, you'd barely be able to see the turbines. I think to a lot of us, this would be a wonderful thing because it would be signifying keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

There are two ways to look at the opposition. One is to be derisive of it, which frankly I am. It is selfish. It is myopic. It is to a great extent driven by right-wing pro-fossil fuel tropes that have spread on the New Jersey shore as well as now, unfortunately, in Long Island. The other is that there needs to be some real direct, unfortunately, monetary benefits to the people of Long Beach, because even though it's my opinion that they're not going to be suffering in any real way, well, I guess that's not theirs.

The best way to deal with that is to increase the profitability of wind, help defray, say, local property taxes for a period of time. The way to make that happen is with some robust carbon pricing. I think at the end of the day, what we're seeing is that the failure to price the climate damage caused by fossil fuels into the price of electricity generated with fossil fuels, at bottom, that's holding up wind power. We can reverse that by-

Brian Lehrer: Charles-

Charles: -fully pricing carbon emissions.

Brian Lehrer: -I hear you. I'm going to ask our reporters about whether that could be done at the state level, even if they're politically stuck in Congress on that kind of idea, like a carbon tax. First, we are making perhaps what is our first-ever segue from Long Beach to Long Beach Island. Patty on the Jersey Shore, I don't know if you're on Long Beach Island or somewhere else on the Jersey Shore, but thanks for calling in.

Patty: Oh, thanks for taking my call. No, I'm by Asbury Park, which also is slated to have offshore wind all up the coast. I just want to say, I really support offshore wind. I know for every large offshore wind development that goes out there, like 1,000 gigawatts they were talking about, that's the equivalent of a large gas power plant. We're breathing that air in New Jersey, and people's health is impacted. The clean energy goals are essential to be met for the next generation. I don't see how anybody can oppose offshore wind and look a child in the eye and not feel guilty.

Brian Lehrer: Patty, thank you very much. Ry from Politico New Jersey, do they ever talk about a state-level carbon tax, which as the caller Charles was describing would certainly give the wind energy producers a big economic leg up?

Ry Rivard: There's a regional greenhouse gas initiative that many states in the region are part of. Also, when they do economic analyses of the cost-benefit analysis of different projects, they consider what's called the social cost of carbon. No, I don't think there's a state-level carbon tax that's been contemplated in New Jersey-

Brian Lehrer: Nor in New York?

Ry Rivard: -at least not realistically.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Marie?

Marie French: Yes, it's a great question. The state is now looking at what would essentially amount to an increased cost for carbon emissions through more of a cap-and-trade approach, where they would set a declining cap to meet the state's actual emissions goals over the next several years. They would [unintelligible 00:15:06], and that would essentially create a cost for emitting. How that's going to play out in the power sector is still definitely the subject of a lot of debate. We won't see those draft regulations until later [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Bob in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Yes. I used to do a lot of work for environmental organizations, so I've been a believer in wind energy for quite some time. One of the things in the arguments I wish that the wind industry would make is that we praise large majestic structures all the time, whether they're buildings. I think that wind turbines, they're quite beautiful and they're only getting bigger.

I just mentioned that because far from being disruptive to the offshore view, not only do they benefit the environment, but they're pretty cool, reductively. Has the wind industry really even leaned into that? I'd love to know everyone's thoughts.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. I know that there's a place in the Berkshires where I go sometimes, where there's some windmills basically on top of a mountain. I think they look really cool, but that's just me. Ry, are there any fans of the way the wind farms might look off the Jersey coast?

Ry Rivard: I haven't really heard that one. If you look off the coast of Santa Barbara in California, for instance, they have these old oil rigs, offshore oil rigs. There's a certain interesting part to them because they are part of a large oil spill, which with offshore wind would never happen. It's like if you enjoy seeing a boat off in the distance at night and there's a light blinking on it, perhaps you would enjoy seeing a wind turbine off in the distance, but if you don't, then you won't.

Brian Lehrer: Judy has a different perspective than the last caller who likes looking at wind farms. Judy, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Judy: Hi. My husband and I have spent maybe 50 summers bicycling in the Island, particularly in the west of the Island, and maybe in the recent decade, I don't remember exactly how long, they've put up these wind turbines every place. They're neat, they're clean, you still have the road and the ocean view, but it definitely takes away from the feeling of being in this pristine scenery. I understand why a lot of people don't like them, particularly hikers, bicyclists, people of that sort.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. We're going to run out of time in just a minute. Marie, I'll throw this to you. I'm not sure which of you wrote it in your jointly reported journalism. "Approving new wind farms became a sometimes competitive cause célèbre for Democratic leaders. It also became something of a zero-sum game." Can you give us a little context for that? Then we're out of time.

Marie French: Yes. Governors up and down the coast have been trying to capture the supply chain with all of those union jobs and big investments in the US for this up-and-coming industry. They've been competing in a lot of ways to capture that, tying those investments to awards for these projects and trying to get that going. Looking forward, it seems there's more appetite for the states to work together. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Brian Lehrer: Marie French and Ry Rivard, who cover energy and the environment for Politico in New York and New Jersey, respectively. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Marie French: Thank you.

Ry Rivard: Thank you.

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