NJ Spotlight published the following article on 7/18/2014. To read the full article, click here.
Feds Want to Lease Offshore Wind Sites On Thousands of Acres Off New Jersey Coast
Tom Johnson | July 18, 2014After years dreaming about the creation of an arts district in downtown Trenton, city officials this week announced a $50,000 grant to help get the project rolling.
Trenton and the Passage Theatre Company have received a federal grant to help facilitate the development of the district in the city’s Old Trenton area, which encompasses roughly nine square blocks of the city extending west from Route 1. The zone includes mostly housing, but also theater, fashion and other arts activities.
Without such a mechanism, developers say they will never be able to build the farms. In a law aimed at promoting offshore wind along the Jersey coast passed four years ago this August, the state Board of Public Utilities was supposed to develop a way to help finance the projects, but has never done so.
As a result, New Jersey is far behind its goals for offshore wind. The state’s Energy Master Plan calls for at least 1,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2012 and 3,000 megawatts by 2020, according to the BPU.
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