New Jersey To Become a World Power in Wind Power
Again highlighting the lack of political willpower at the top of the US Federal tree, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has announced that his state is hoping to become a world leader in wind-generated energy.
Governor of New Jersey since January 17, 2006, Corzine wants the Garden State to triple the total amount of wind generated power that it plans to use by 2020. This would bring its total up to 3,000 megawatts, measuring out to be 13% of New Jersey’s total energy, and enough energy to power anywhere between 800,000 and just under a million homes.
This comes just days after the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced that it had chosen Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE) as the preferred developer for a 350-megawatt wind farm off the NJ coast.
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”We want to create this generation’s race to the moon, but this time, a race to the sea, to harness this potential wind source off of our coasts, and bring economic development, environmental benefits, and new, green jobs to the Garden State,” Corzine said Monday.
GSOE will begin evaluating the environmental impacts and wind resource quality assessments for the proposed wind farm that they hope will take the form of 96 wind turbines arranged in a rectangular grid 16 to 20 miles off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties. If all goes to plan, the wind farm could be up and running by 2012 and 100% completed by 2013.
In a clip that was made for news, Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of Environment New Jersey noted that the plan was ”a gale force for change, moving us away from dirty power and towards a new energy future. It is the most visionary plan to promote offshore wind energy in the nation.”
As with many renewable energy projects, Governor Corzine believes that some 500 new jobs will be created, with twice that amount during the construction and installation phase.
credit: wjklos at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
