News Source: Save Long Beach Island (Save LBI)

LONG BEACH ISLAND, N.J., July 22, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Save Long Beach Island (Save LBI), a grass-roots environmental organization dedicated to protecting our ocean and shore communities, is urging the country’s large environmental organizations to take a step back and critically examine their support of offshore wind energy.

PHOTO CAPTION: Visual simulation of what the Atlantic Shores South project would look from Holgate on Long Beach Island, NJ. Source: BOEM.

In a letter to key executives at The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club, and more than a dozen other national environmental organizations, Save LBI President and Ph.D. scientist Bob Stern challenged the stance that the benefits of offshore wind energy outweigh the environmental impacts, asserting that relying on massive fields of offshore turbines to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is inefficient, environmentally destructive, and the most expensive option on a cost-per-ton-to-remove basis.

“Our membership, like yours, would like to see progress made on the climate change problem, but at the same time we are bitterly opposed to the [Atlantic Shores] offshore wind project we know you support,” wrote Stern, a former manager of the U.S. Department of Energy office overseeing environmental protection related to energy programs and projects. “We bring our concerns not to create more discord but… to ask you to take the time to consider these concerns, with a goal perhaps of moving beyond offshore wind and looking at better ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Like many in and around the Long Beach Island (LBI) community, I was stunned when I learned of the Atlantic Shores plan to develop an industrial complex of 1,000-foot-tall turbines starting less than 9 miles off the coast of Atlantic City and LBI, directly in the historic migration path of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, closer to shore than any similar project on Earth, and near the Brigantine Natural Wilderness Area and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, both of which are afforded special federal protection under the Wilderness Act and Clean Air Act. It is, frankly, astounding that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) would 1) approve a lease area for commercial wind-energy development adjacent to the shoreline line of a thriving beach community let alone a sensitive nature preserve and 2) grant (without full and proper vetting) the approvals needed to construct the first 200 of a planned 357 super-sized wind turbines that would extend the full length of the island.”

Stern urged the environmental leaders to read Save LBI’s new report, “The Benefits and Risks of an Offshore Wind Project,” which cites independent research exposing a series of irreparable environmental, economic, and social consequences that were either ignored or obfuscated in official project documentation from offshore wind developers and government agencies. The report details many negative impacts of offshore wind, reveals how claims of reductions in GHG emissions are oversimplified and misleading, and presents data showing that offshore wind projects cannot stop or reduce sea level rise — only delay whatever is coming by a matter of days. The document also exposes the hypocrisy in Environmental Impact Statements for the Atlantic Shores (New Jersey), Vineyard Wind (Massachusetts), and Revolution Wind (Rhode Island) projects, all of which concede that the impact of these projects on climate change is “negligible.”

Environmental repercussions outlined in the report include:

• Harming and killing marine mammals at unprecedented numbers.
• Creating significant underwater noise from large turbine operation that interferes with historic whale-migration patterns, all but guaranteeing extinction of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
• Disturbing the behavior of the bottlenose dolphin and reducing its population.
• Putting air quality in the Brigantine Wilderness Area at risk of “significant deterioration.”
• Creating significant noise onshore, which during atmospheric inversions would produce indoor noise levels linked to sleep loss and other health issues.

Additional negative impacts include:

• Compromising national security by impairing the accuracy of NORAD early-warning air defense radar systems.
• Further increases in the already spiraling cost of electricity, as documented in a 2024 Whitestrand Consulting study showing that the suspended Atlantic Shores South alone would increase electric rates throughout New Jersey, hiking residential rates by 11%, commercial rates by 13%, and industrial rates by 15% to pay for the massive government subsidies awarded to build the project.
• The absence of a legal or regulatory requirement to remove the towers, blades, and turbine foundations at the end of a wind turbine’s useful life, and no dedicated funding source for such an operation, potentially leaving navigation risks, the loss of fishing grounds, visual blight, and ocean/shore contamination for generations to come.
• Destroying ancient archeological sites dating back to the Ice Age, which could shed light on the first humans to come to North America.

An Executive Summary and the full 23-page Save LBI report, “The Benefits and Risks of an Offshore Wind Project,” are available at savelbi.org. Click here to download: https://www.savelbi.org/benefits-risks

“We are certainly not climate-change deniers, nor are we aligned with any political Party,” Stern concluded. “We are in favor of using common sense practices and well-grounded science to select sources of clean energy that are both reliable and responsible. There are significant opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are far less expensive and environmentally damaging than offshore wind. We welcome the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue or perhaps collaborate with you to fund new studies to achieve that goal.”

About Save LBI

Save LBI is a not-for profit, non-partisan organization based on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island that has been active in ongoing litigation and other efforts to protect the coastal and marine environment from the senseless industrialization of our oceans. The organization is led by Beach Haven, N.J. resident Bob Stern, a Ph.D. scientist with experience in environmental planning and environmental law. He is a former manager of the U.S. Department of Energy office responsible for overseeing environmental protection related to energy projects and the Bureau of Air Quality Planning within the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). For more information on Save LBI and its efforts, please visit SaveLBI.org.

Contact: https://www.savelbi.org/contact

For more information click here: https://www.savelbi.org

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PHOTO CAPTION: Visual simulation of what the Atlantic Shores South project would look from Holgate on Long Beach Island, NJ. Source: BOEM.

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