Other Agencies with Actions or Authorizations:

Department of the Army, US Army Corps of Engineers - Regulatory

Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Department of Defense, US Army Corps of Engineers - Civil Works

Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service

Environmental Protection Agency

Description:

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (“Atlantic Shores”) proposes to construct, operate, and maintain the Atlantic Shore North Project (the “Project”; “Atlantic Shores North”), an offshore renewable wind energy facility in Lease Area OCS-A 0549, which is approximately 7.8 statute miles (mi) (12.6 kilometers [km]) from the New Jersey (NJ) shoreline and approximately 60 miles (96.6 km) from the New York State (NY) Coast.

The Lease Area layout is designed to maximize offshore renewable wind energy production while minimizing effects on existing marine uses. The structures will be aligned in a uniform grid with multiple lines of orientation allowing straight transit through the Lease Area. Within the Lease Area, the WTGs and OSSs will be connected by inter-array cables and/or inter-link cables. Energy from the OSSs will be delivered to shore by buried export cables that will be located within designated Export Cable Corridors (ECCs) from the Lease Area through Federal as well as New Jersey and/or New York State waters to landfall sites on the New Jersey and/or New York coastlines.

Atlantic Shores will use horizontal directional drilling (HDD) technology to install the export cables from the end of the ECCs to the landfall sites to minimize impacts to the intertidal and nearshore habitats and ensure stable burial of the cables. From each landfall site, the onshore interconnection cables will travel underground primarily along existing roadways and utility rights-of-way (ROWs) to new or existing onshore substation and/or converter station sites.

The Executive Director granted a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management request to extend the COP, NEPA, Section 106, ESA, EFH, MMPA, Section 10/404, Section 408, NPDES, and OCS Air Permit completion dates on January 2, 2025. The Executive Director determination is posted here.

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (“Atlantic Shores”) requested a pause in all milestones and associated deadlines in the FAST-41 permitting dashboard schedule for the Atlantic Shores North Project (Lease OCS-A 0549) (the “Project”) for a period of 9 months, through January 26, 2026, subject to further extension. This pause of the permitting dashboard schedule for the Project is necessary because the January 20, 2025 Presidential Memorandum titled “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects” created delays in agency approvals and are expected to continue to do so for an unknown period of time, making it not reasonably feasible for Atlantic Shores to continue with key deliverables required by the current FAST-41 permitting timetable. The requested pause is necessary to provide Atlantic Shores the time needed to ascertain the full impact of the Presidential Memorandum before incurring additional costs to perform the wide variety of development activities that would otherwise have to take place during the period of the requested pause.