Trump has always hated offshore wind. Now he’s moving to kill it.
On Monday, the Interior Department abruptly suspended leases for five of the nation’s largest proposed offshore wind projects. This effectively ends any ongoing offshore wind development in the United States.
The moves come as U.S. electricity demand rises for the first time in years, thanks in large part to the data centers needed for the artificial intelligence boom. The Biden administration issued the leases to help meet that demand and as part of its goal to move the country away from fossil fuels and toward more renewable energy sources.
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“This so-called ‘pause’ on offshore wind makes no sense and is an escalation of the administration’s continued, baseless attacks on clean energy,” Pasha Feinberg, offshore wind strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, said in a statement. “In its continued effort to prop up declining fossil fuel interests, the administration is making increasingly crazy decisions in favor of the clean energy projects this economy needs. »
The five leases suspended under the order are Vineyard Wind 1, Revolution Wind, CVOW, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind. They span coastal waters from Massachusetts to Virginia and are expected to create hundreds of new jobs. The New York Times said the projects are worth $25 billion and will eliminate enough electricity generation to power 2.5 million homes and businesses. The order leaves the United States with just two operational offshore wind farms, one off the coast of Rhode Island and the other in New York waters, the Times noted.
In a press release announcing the pauses, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cited “national security risks,” including technological vulnerability and the projects’ proximity to the East Coast. The department also said unclassified government reports “have long discovered” that offshore wind projects create radar interference called “clutter.” The clutter, he says, obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets near wind projects.
“Turbines can interfere with radar – this is absolutely nothing new,” Feinberg told Grist in an email. “All developers must work with [the Department of Defense] during design and construction to assess potential impacts and avoid or mitigate them.
Kirk Lippold, a national security expert and former commanding officer of the USS Cole, told The Associated Press that records show the Defense Department “was consulted at every step of the authorization process.” He said these projects would actually be a boon to national security as they would diversify the country’s energy supply. Experts say increased wind power production would also benefit customers.
Can offshore wind survive the Trump administration?
A recent study by Daymark Energy Advisors found that if contracted wind projects off the coast of New England had been operational last winter, ratepayers could have saved $400 million. “These additional costs are going to be reflected in utility bills, there’s no doubt about that. If the ultimate goal is to have cheap and available electricity, this is not the way to get there,” Alexander Heil, senior economist at economic think tank The Conference Board, told Grist.
However, President Donald Trump has long hated wind power, recently calling it “so pathetic and so bad, so expensive to operate.” On his first day in office, he suspended new wind energy leasing and permitting on federal land. In September, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, issued a stop-work order for Revolution Wind, one of the projects mentioned in today’s announcement. But the latest changes constitute the administration’s most aggressive volley yet.
“Trump’s obsession with killing offshore wind projects is unbalanced, irrational and unjustified,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement. He said New York would “continue to fight” the administration’s stop-work orders on Empire and other offshore wind projects. Jenny Slayton, a spokesperson for Dominion Energy, which is developing Virginia’s coastal offshore wind project, told the New York Times in a statement that “we are prepared to do what is necessary to get these vital electrons flowing as quickly as possible.”
