The Trump administration is halting an offshore wind challenge in New York. Vitality specialists fear that the U.S. will fall behind different nations with booming offshore wind, like the UK.
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Christopher Furlong/Getty Pictures/Getty Pictures Europe
U.S. Secretary of the Inside Doug Burgum has ordered a halt to an offshore wind challenge close to the coast of Lengthy Island. Right this moment, Equinor, the Norwegian vitality firm that owns and operates the challenge, announced it is complying with the order and suspending all construction.
President Trump, a longtime critic of wind vitality, issued a moratorium on new improvement of offshore wind tasks, one in all his first executive orders upon returning to the White Home.
However Burgum’s choice escalates the Administration’s opposition to offshore wind as a result of the multi-billion greenback challenge in New York already had its federal permits and had damaged floor, says Robert Freudenberg, a vice chairman on the Regional Plan Affiliation, an vitality nonprofit within the New York metropolitan space.
”This actually is subsequent stage offshore wind aggression,” Freudenberg says.
The offshore wind challenge, referred to as Empire Wind 1, was supposed to provide energy to 500,000 homes in New York. The federal lease for the challenge was signed through the first Trump administration in 2017. A lot of the federal permitting for this challenge occurred through the Biden administration.
In a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the lead federal company for allowing offshore wind tasks, Burgum wrote that “approval for the challenge was rushed by means of by the prior administration with out adequate evaluation.”
The letter didn’t give particulars concerning the alleged rush. The Inside Division didn’t reply to NPR’s request for remark. The concept the overview of this wind challenge was rushed isn’t supported by proof, says Matthew Eisenson, senior fellow at Columbia College’s Sabin Heart for Local weather Change Legislation.
”BOEM spent two and a half years conducting an environmental overview. The ultimate product of that environmental overview is an environmental impression assertion that is over 3000 pages lengthy, with all of its appendices, and it’s extremely thorough,” Eisenson says. “ This rationale, it’s extremely suspect.”
Trump has usually mentioned, with out proof, that the offshore wind business kills whales, writing about “the importance of marine life” in his January govt order.
Two years in the past after a request from Congressional opponents of wind vitality, the Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO) started investigating whether or not the offshore wind business kills whales. On Monday they issued their report. The GAO cites the experience of the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which says it “doesn’t anticipate any loss of life or severe harm to whales from offshore wind associated actions.”
“So there isn’t any universe through which the GAO report can be used to substantiate the cease work order for Empire Wind 1,” says Kris Ohleth, govt director of the Particular Initiative on Offshore Wind, a wind coverage assume tank.
The U.S. clean-energy business is on tempo for record growth this year. Wind vitality makes up about 10% of the U.S. electrical energy combine — the most important single supply of renewable vitality.
However whereas the offshore wind business was anticipating to see vital new tasks this yr just like the Vineyard Wind 1 challenge in Massachusetts and the Revolution Wind challenge in Rhode Island, Ohleth says all offshore wind tasks at the moment are in jeopardy.
“It ought to ship alarm bells, not simply to the offshore wind business, however to industries past offshore wind,” Freudenberg says, “that the federal authorities might select to cease tasks that had been accredited and are underway at their whim.”
The halting of Empire Wind 1 disrupts a much-needed electrical energy provide to a area with rising energy calls for for issues like knowledge facilities, says Equipment Kennedy, managing director for energy on the Pure Assets Protection Council. “ That is the form of vitality dominance that the U.S. wants. That the Trump administration ought to be supporting,” she says.
New York has a purpose of creating 9,000 megawatts in offshore wind energy by 2035. That purpose is now in danger, Eisenson says. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote in a statement that Burgum’s order stands to threaten 1,000 union employee jobs.
“We can usually consider these tasks as out within the ocean, however the impacts are actually felt in communities,” Freudenberg says.
