Posted on March 17, 2025
Federal officials pulled a permit from Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind on Friday in a move that could spell more delays and setbacks for New Jersey’s first offshore wind energy facility.
Environmental Appeals Court Judge Mary Kay Lynch ruled Friday to remand a Clean Air Act permit issued last September to Atlantic Shores back to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
EPA officials filed a motion in February to have the court remand the permit to the agency, in order to review the wind energy project’s environmental impacts. The action came in response to President Donald Trump’s January memorandum to withdraw all of the outer continental shelf from offshore wind leases for further review.
In 2021, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities awarded Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind a contract for 1.5 megawatts of renewable energy production to be generated in a facility off Atlantic City. But Friday’s court decision could threaten the future of that project.
The EPA’s decision isn’t the first setback for the project. Shell, a project partner, withdrew from the Atlantic Shores wind project in January. Shell wrote off nearly $1 billion as it withdrew from the project, before its quarterly earnings report.
In its quarterly earnings report on Jan. 30, Shell disclosed a $996 million loss associated with the Atlantic Shores project to build the 2,800-megawatt array of 197 turbines off Long Beach Island and Brigantine.
“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,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. “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.”
Bob Stern of Save LBI, a group that opposes the Atlantic Shores project, was pleased by the news. The group had petitioned the federal government in October to review of the Clean Air Act permit issued to the offshore wind developer.
