Gov. Phil Murphy, who already will be remembered for launching New Jerseys offshore wind energy future, recently more than doubled the states commitment to electricity from turbines in the Atlantic Ocean.

In June, when the state picked rsted U.S. Offshore Wind to develop its first wind farm off Atlantic City, its goal of producing 3,500 megawatts by 2030 was considered ambitious. Five months later, with climate activist Al Gore at his side, Murphy ordered the state to produce 7,500 MW by 2035. That would be enough to power 3.2 million homes.

The original goal was worthy and very timely, and this one is good too. But dont assume that scaling up New Jerseys wind energy will be easy or done well, or even at the reasonable cost of the first 1,100MW rsted will deploy by 2024.

The project off Atlantic City is expected to add just $1.46 a month to residential electric bills. But subsequent wind farms wont qualify for the substantial clean energy investment tax credit that will expire next year. Projects will have to raise prices or lower costs to offset the loss of that break. Also, the more offshore wind farms are built, the more costly upgrades will be needed to onshore transmission lines and substations.

New Jersey could reduce the grid upgrade costs by working with neighboring states to create the regional grid capacity required by the rush of all coastal states into offshore wind energy. The states should also collaborate on getting sufficient support from the fishing and shipping industries affected by wind farms at sea.

New Jersey already seems to have fallen behind in multi-state cooperation on the research and development that will cut costs and speed deployment. New York, Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia are partners in an R&D consortium. New Jersey is conspicuously absent.

There may also be a challenge just to build all of the wind farms and turbines that states want. New York already boosted its goal to 9,000 MW. Last year started with an offshore wind commitment of just 5,300 MW for the entire U.S. With Murphys increase to 7,500 MW, that is at least 24,000 MW now (or 24 gigawatts, to put it in billions of watts instead of millions, inevitable given the industrys rapid growth).

The total capacity for federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management areas leased to developers is just over 21,000 MW. More leases will need to be offered and secured by bidding.

The good news is that East Coast states have the potential to generate about five times as much power from ocean wind as they currently have demand for.

Working swiftly to harvest some of that clean energy potential is good policy. Doing it cooperatively with other states to help ensure efficiency and cost-effectiveness would be good government.

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Doubling NJ offshore wind power will require work, cooperation - Press of Atlantic City