The World is Healing: Big New Jersey Offshore Wind Project is Dead in the Water

The Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Project, once hailed as a cornerstone of New Jersey’s ambitious clean energy future, is dead in the water. On June 4, 2025, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC—a joint venture between Shell and EDF Renewables—filed to terminate its 1.5-gigawatt (GW) contract with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU).

The shifting winds of federal energy policy in this second Trump administration played a major role. In January 2025, President Donald Trump, freshly returned to the White House, issued an executive order halting offshore wind leasing on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf and ordering a sweeping review of federal permitting. This “Presidential Wind Memorandum” sent shockwaves through an industry already battered by inflation and supply chain woes. For Atlantic Shores, the death knell came on March 14, when the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Environmental Appeals Board, nudged by Trump’s directive, remanded the project’s Clean Air Act permit for further review. That decision, coupled with a broader permitting freeze, gutted the project’s regulatory foundation, rendering it “no longer viable” under its original terms, as the company stated.