Trump can reverse Biden’s approval of new offshore turbines
A Jan. 20 executive order pausing new leases and permits for offshore wind was a good start.
The suspension this month of the remaining projects off the New Jersey coast demonstrates that it’s having an effect.
Even so, Joe Biden may end up the winner. During his last several months in office, federal agencies rushed through final permits for hundreds of additional turbines in productive and pristine coastal waters.
These projects are moving ahead.
Mr. Trump needs to derail them immediately. Doing so would protect the coastal marine environment, save taxpayers billions of dollars, and spare electricity consumers the inflationary burden of paying for expensive offshore wind power.
We know from last summer’s catastrophic failure at the Vineyard Wind site off the coast of Nantucket that such projects are risky and can have negative economic, social and environmental consequences.
After a 70-ton turbine blade broke off and tumbled into the sea, Nantucket beaches were forced to close while fiberglass and other debris washed ashore. The turbine failure put at risk Nantucket’s $300-million-a-year tourism industry, and lost sales during the season’s peak could run into the millions.
The debris covered some 40 miles of ocean with unknown consequences for birds, fish, whales and dolphins.
More broadly, offshore wind projects hurt the U.S. economy, not only by wasting taxpayer dollars but also by harming the nation’s economic productivity. Democratic governors talk about the “good-paying green jobs” their aggressive support of offshore wind will produce—ignoring that most of the wind-turbine equipment the U.S. uses is manufactured in Europe.
Worse still, they ignore that the higher electricity prices forced by their policies take capital from all kinds of businesses, which in turn can afford to hire fewer workers.
The Trump administration should take four immediate actions.
First, suspend work on existing permits pending a systematic review of the potential environmental and economic effects of these projects.
Second, issue an emergency order suspending all National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “incidental take” permits that allow wind developers to harm and kill marine mammals.
This would halt operations and allow time for a careful review—unless the wind industry drops any pretense of being an environmental project and fights to protect its permits to kill marine mammals.
Third, direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue an emergency suspension of state-imposed offshore wind power purchase agreements. This would prevent backdoor subsidy dollars from reaching offshore wind projects.
FERC intervention is warranted because wind power mandates have a huge effect on the reliability and cost of power.
Finally, reverse the Jan. 17 Biden administration order allowing the Vineyard Wind project to resume construction and operations until completion of an adequate study of the reasons for the blade failure.
The offshore wind industry deserves an award for executing such a successful propaganda campaign. The industry persuaded Democratic politicians desperate to “do something” about ‘climate change’ to guarantee them billions in subsidies and help them crush local opposition to the projects.
Whether these politicians really believed in offshore wind is less certain. Buried in the text of the Vineyard Wind permit that the Biden administration issued in 2021 is a flash of honesty exposing its cynicism—a statement that the project would have a negligible effect on ‘climate change’.
Offshore wind permitting under Mr. Biden started from a predetermined conclusion—approving the projects—and worked backward to produce scientific and economic justifications.
For example, the “incidental take” permit NOAA granted Vineyard Wind authorizing harm to hundreds of protected whales and dolphins states: “Available information on impacts to marine mammals from pile driving”—the process of forcing a long pile, or post, into the seabed—“associated with offshore wind is limited to information on harbor porpoises and seals, as the vast majority of this research has occurred at European offshore wind projects where large whales and other odontocete species are uncommon.”
In other words, NOAA acknowledged it was issuing permits to harm whales with no scientific basis whatsoever.
The “environmentally friendly” label on the offshore wind power industry shouldn’t give it a free pass to wreak destruction on coastal waters and inflict economic and social costs on the American public.
If Mr. Trump doesn’t augment his initial orders, he will hand Mr. Biden a victory and preside over the deployment of hundreds of new offshore wind turbines, thereby missing an opportunity to stop waste and protect consumers and the environment.
Header image: E and E News
About the author: Mr. Khedouri was a senior budget official in the Reagan administration and recently retired as a partner and portfolio manager at a global private equity firm.
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