well after taking a tough blow it looks like the state's plans for an offshore wind industry are swinging back the Board of Public Utilities today approved two new offshore wind farms that are expected to power nearly two million homes the Project's also satisfy one of the biggest complaints from opponents they're farther off the coastline and out of view from beachfront homes senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports.

By unanimous votes New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities put Governor Murphy's ambitious but beleaguered clean energy agenda back on track selecting two out of four bids for new offshore wind farms both winners attentive energy and Leading Light wind plan to build sites generating more than 3,700 megawatt of electricity combined with turbines located at least 40 miles off The Jersey Shoreline but the awards came with a Stern warning on behalf of New Jersey we will hold you accountable the Bold future we are charting today will require even Bolder perhaps fanatical even tyrannical oversight of your progress and your performance the BPU estimates these projects will power 1.8 million homes the rate payer impacts expected to range from $684 a month for residential customers up to more than 500 bucks a month for industrial consumers winners promis to help lowincome rate payers I'll be honest I'm a bit speechless right now we're so excited uh to get to work and embark on this partnership with the state of New Jersey and we feel very confident in the bid price that we couldn't go any lower but at the same time it's a price that we can absolutely deliver this project on clean energy and off in particular is a Statewide opportunity uh we're bringing jobs we improving the local supply chain we're really creating opportunity for Pathways for communities and industries that have not had this opportunity the vote comes Less Than 3 months after Danish developer Orsted unexpectedly cancelled its wind farm projects off Cape May citing supply chain problems and Rising costs even after lawmakers signed over tax breaks at rate payer expense these new price your bids require both companies to invest in the Paulsboro facility that constructs turban foundations and to order shipments through the South Jersey wind Port we will enforce those guarantees with Relentless oversight and unwavering defense of our great payers there will be no hat andand requests no unforeseen expenses no nickel and Diamond orad's implosion gummed up Governor Murphy's goal of 100% clean energy by 2035 with 11,000 megawatt of offshore electricity by 2040 the BPU moved up the next round of offshore wind project bids I think the states have really gone through a lot of learnings over the years so using those Lessons Learned things can be accelerated things need to be accelerated if we are going to meet all the climate and economic targets that offshore wind can help support so I don't think that it's too quick a pace I think it's an urgent and expedient Pace to meet our climate goals we need to move forward on offshore wind we know that last year was the warmest year on record and it's only going to get warmer offshore Farms have sparked emotional protests with worries about impacts on Fisheries whale populations and Shore tourism opponents sued to block New Jersey's only current offshore Wind Farm Atlantic Shores one because it's located only 15 miles from the beach these two new proposals might be more acceptable they'll discuss it it just makes more sense to uh to site much further offshore and not cause uh all the pain with with the short degradation uh and in doing that you would also leave a path for the whale to migrate if either of these projects need to be tweaked there's plenty of time their first wind turbine won't start spinning until at least 2030 in Trenton I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight news