New Jersey Moves to Terminate Offshore Wind State Agreement Approach with Regional Grid Operator

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJ BPU) has requested to terminate the State Agreement Approach (SAA) it signed with PJM Interconnection (PJM) in 2021 to develop offshore wind transmission projects in a more streamlined and cost-efficient way that also allow for minimal disruption to communities and nature while providing certainty for offshore wind farm developers.

The State of New Jersey and PJM have launched two solicitations for offshore wind grid connection infrastructure since then. The first, completed in 2022, is to connect 7.5 GW of offshore wind energy that New Jersey had in development. The second solicitation, launched in 2024, was dedicated to studying whether a new SAA transmission solicitation was needed to connect further 3.5 GW of offshore wind, as the state increased the target from 7.5 GW by 2035 to 11 GW by 2040. 

In 2022, through the SAA, the New Jersey BPU selected a project for pre-built infrastructure for multiple offshore wind transmission lines with a single point of interconnection to the grid at the Larrabee Collector Station, and a series of projects to construct the onshore infrastructure necessary to deliver offshore wind to New Jersey consumers.

The project involves the construction of new offshore transmission infrastructure by Mid-Atlantic Offshore Development, a joint venture between Shell and EDF Renewables, with Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) then carrying the electricity to existing substations, where it will be integrated into the grid.

With the SAA, New Jersey was the first US state to fully align its offshore wind transmission goals with its regional grid operator’s planning process, and the projects selected represent the first-of-its-kind coordinated transmission solution to get offshore wind-generated energy to the New Jersey grid.

The state has several offshore wind farm projects that were granted federal approval and selected in the state’s offshore wind power procurement.

However, as the market in the US has deteriorated, first after the impact of the pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war on the global economic conditions, and then on the national and local level with the change of the US government administration, projects in New Jersey have been paused or cancelled.

Formerly a lead project in the state, developed by Ørsted, Ocean Wind 1 and 2 were cancelled in late 2023, when the company announced it would cease development, citing high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain bottlenecks as the reasons.

The 1.5 GW Atlantic Shores, 1.3 GW Attentive Energy Two, and 2.4 GW Leading Light Wind have also been in development in the waters off New Jersey, however, the future of these projects has been affected as well.

In 2025, developers behind Atlantic Shores and Leading Light Wind announced dropping the projects.

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, a joint venture between EDF Renewables and Shell, which Shell later exited, terminated its OREC contract with New Jersey BPU in August 2025, saying that due to uncertainty caused by federal actions, it had paused its construction schedule, including cancelling its interconnection service agreement with PJM Interconnection and pausing transmission upgrades.

In November last year, Invenergy and energyRE, which were developing the Leading Light offshore wind farm, informed the NJ BPU that they would not move forward with the 2.4 GW project as they had faced a series of obstacles in the development of the offshore wind farm, including supply chain, equipment, and vendor challenges, as well as changing regulatory requirements.

At the end of March, the developer behind New Jersey’s Attentive Energy Two project, TotalEnergies, reached an agreement with the US government that will get the company its offshore wind lease fees back for cancelling its offshore wind projects.

“Given the Trump Administration’s aggressive and illegal actions to stop offshore wind projects in our region–including the recent agreement it reached with the firm Total Energies to use taxpayer dollars to buy back an offshore wind lease–the Sherrill Administration had little choice but to cancel the agreement, given that there were no viable offshore wind projects to plug in and use the infrastructure”, the Regional Plan Association (RPA), a non-profit organisation promoting economic and environmental development in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, said in a statement on 22 April.

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