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The industry is being frozen out of Washington.
As a candidate for president, Donald Trump said he wanted to stop all offshore wind projects on Day One back in office. One month into his latest administration, renewables developers and climate advocates are privately very worried he’s much closer to pulling it off than they had ever thought possible.
Trump issued an executive order on January 20 halting new approvals for many wind projects, including all offshore wind. Since then, government officials have quickly and quietly given the industry the cold shoulder, all but halting permitting activity. Some agencies flat out told companies and lobbyists they wouldn’t talk to wind developers. Public meetings and webinars for new offshore wind projects have been canceled, including relatively benign informational sessions scheduled by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a quasi-independent science and research entity underneath the Energy Department. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told one developer, Ocean Winds, that it would not give the company an updated timetable for decisions on its proposed Bluepoint Wind project off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, defying a recent update to federal permitting law.
“I feel like we’re operating on a worst case scenario,” said Shayna Steingard, a senior policy specialist for offshore wind at the National Wildlife Federation. “This is kind of our worst fears.”
Offshore wind is incredibly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of federal agencies. It’s been that way since President George W. Bush Jr. enacted the Energy Policy Act of 2005, creating a process for developing wind in the Outer Continental Shelf. Not only must every offshore wind project go through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, but they must also get Clean Water Act permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and a range of environmental permits from the Environmental Protection Agency and Fish and Wildlife Service. There are also less intuitively related agencies involved in the process, including the U.S. Coast Guard, which has butted heads with offshore wind developers even under friendlier administrations.
The Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, declined to comment for this story. So did the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, telling Heatmap that the scientific institution “is operating under strict guidance to refer all media queries involving the new administration” to the Energy Department’s main public affairs office, which did not respond to requests for comment.
But by all appearances, offshore wind has been frozen out of the U.S. entirely.
On earnings calls, companies already wrestling with higher project costs are starting to talk about U.S. offshore wind in especially grim terms. The tone reminds me of my past life reporting on minerals extraction projects threatened by political violence and military conflict.
After New Jersey all but abandoned its would-be first offshore wind project, Atlantic Shores, its project developers — Shell and EDF — wrote it off as a major financial loss. Luc Rémont, CEO of EDF, told analysts Friday that it was “realistic given the degree of uncertainty and the degree of threat” from Trump’s activities “to just depreciate” the assets, according to a translation of the call posted by the company. The CFO of Equinor — the developer behind Empire Wind, one of the few offshore wind proposals expected to start construction this year — told investors that “there is remaining uncertainty in” the project and openly weighed the “significant cancellation costs” against the benefits remaining to be gleaned from the Inflation Reduction Act, which are themselves potentially under threat in Congress. (Equinor told me in a statement that the project remains on track to begin construction this year.)
Top executives are ruling out any offshore wind development that might need federal permitting. Rasmus Errboe, the CEO of Ørsted, told analysts on its earnings update that the company was no longer committed to moving forward with any offshore assets in the U.S. except the Revolution and Sunrise wind projects, which received many of their permits under Biden. Projects that haven’t meaningfully started permitting yet are being mothballed — BP, for instance, told me that it withdrew state-level permitting applications for its Beacon Wind proposal in New York to work on “the project’s design and configuration.” Ocean Winds, the developer of Bluepoint Wind, did not respond to requests for comment about whether that project was still in the works after BOEM refused to update its permitting timeline.
In other pockets of the offshore wind space, there’s a clear disconnect between what companies are saying and the risk Trump poses to their immediate futures. Take Dominion Energy, the investor-owned utility behind the proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore wind farm, whose executives recently told analysts they thought their permits would be safe from political meddling. Mere hours earlier, I had reported that Trump’s Justice Department was working with anti-wind organizations to stretch out and delay litigation targeting the project.
Dominion responded to that news with a statement insisting the project would be “completed on-time in late 2026.” The company’s media team did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story, including a question about whether it expects to receive a Coast Guard authorization for power cable work that the Biden administration did not seem to complete before Trump entered office.
At the same time, as I first reported, conservative lawyers and wind critics are privately lobbying the Trump administration to re-examine whale interaction permits issued under Biden, a request that if granted would involve overturning government opinions by career marine biologists. “Just because the company has the approval doesn’t mean it’s all systems go,” Paul Kamenar, an attorney involved in the effort to rescind the permits, told me.
The request has prompted an outcry, including from The Washington Post editorial board and some free market groups. Renewables industry representatives have insisted that rescinding permits for offshore wind projects already under construction would drive up energy costs and make brown outs more likely in areas with rising demand on the grid. They also were quick to point out how many of the people requesting this reconsideration were climate deniers. “The groups involved in this effort have a well-documented history of spreading false claims about renewable energy,” American Clean Power spokesperson Jason Ryan told me.
The risk of an electricity price spike means there’s also a danger that Trump’s vise grip on offshore wind leads to a new generation of fossil-based infrastructure on the East Coast, and every plausible scenario in which the Northeast truly draws down carbon emissions goes down the drain.
My colleague Emily Pontecorvo has written about how the models used to project U.S. climate goals consistently show that the sector must provide a marginal but still significant percentage of future power. A big reason? Geography. The Northeast’s space constraints and high real estate prices mean it is politically perilous to get utility scale carbon-free power to the Northeast without building turbines in the sea, and state level climate goals become almost impossible to meet if projects can’t get through the permitting process before 2029. New York, for example, planned to use offshore wind to get 9 gigawatts of carbon-free power by 2035; Empire Wind — the only project currently in progress with a timeline that could help the state meet that goal — is nowhere near enough on its own.
The Trump administration has so far said little about what it wants to replace these projects with, although given its insistence that we’re in an energy emergency, one would hope the answer is … something. Thankfully, a hint came last week during a Fox Business segment on Trump’s war against offshore wind. Appearing on the show Varney & Co., Trump’s former DOE Secretary Dan Brouillette, who recently departed a brief stint as head of the utility trade group Edison Electric Institute, urged blue states with “environmental goals” to consider “alternative ways” to meet them — that is, natural gas pipelines.
“I wouldn’t be fooled by headlines that suggest that the collapse of the offshore wind industry means that we are somehow going to miss an environmental goal,” Brouilette said. “We could build natural gas pipelines into places like Boston and use natural gas instead of perhaps fuel oil or diesel to produce electricity. That would dramatically reduce the emissions profile of those states.” (Brouillette also spoke briefly about nuclear power but did not get into specifics.)
For the record, while gas-powered energy produces fewer carbon emissions than other fossil fuels, the math on atmospheric greenhouse gas clearly shows that natural gas is incompatible with any plausible scenario that slows, stalls or undoes global climate change and the damage it is causing the planet.
The multitude of ways offshore wind could die by a thousand cuts is why only a precious few people who work in the industry were willing to go on the record for this story. Speaking anonymously, some in the business admit they see this situation in autocratic terms and are afraid of giving the Trump team ideas. One person who’d been in offshore wind for a decade described the behavior of regulators as “systematically, across the board, undermining any credibility to enter into a legal agreement,” which they said “genuinely felt like the end of our nation.” Another told me the feeling in the industry is that “the fundamental rule of law seems to be in enough question to pose a finance risk.”
As is the rule with the Trump administration, some of this government behavior may wind up being ruled illegal. But when administration officials seem willing and able to go the added extralegal mile to accomplish their policy objectives, there’s hardly any comfort in a years-long legal battle. Not when money is the fuel that runs offshore wind, and a noxious combination of inflation and grassroots opposition was already making projects difficult to complete.
“These are definitely challenging times,” acknowledged Hillary Bright, executive director for D.C. offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward, putting the stakes in stark terms. “I really hope the administration can find a place in their energy dominance agenda to support our multi-billion dollar projects creating American jobs that can light up millions of homes in the near future.”
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Along with Senator John Curtis of Utah, the Iowa senator is aiming to preserve the definition of “begin construction” as it applies to tax credits.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wants “begin construction” to mean what it means.
To that end, Grassley has placed a “hold” on three nominees to the Treasury Department, the agency tasked with writing the rules and guidance for implementing the tax provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, many of which depend on that all-important definition.
Grassley and other Republican senators had negotiated a “glidepath for the orderly phaseout” of tax credits for renewables, the senator in a statement announcing the hold, giving developers until July 2026 to start construction on projects (or complete the projects and have them operating by the end of 2027) to qualify for tax credits.
Days after signing the law, however, President Trump signed an executive order calling for new guidance on what exactly starting construction means. The title of that order, “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” has generated understandable concern within the renewables industry that, as part of a deal to get conservative House members to support the bill, the Treasury Department will write new guidance making it much more difficult for wind and solar projects to qualify for tax credits.
“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction'’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade,” Grassley said. Under these longstanding definitions, “beginning construction” can mean undertaking “physical work of a significant nature,” which can include or buying certain long-lead equipment or components like transformers. Another way to qualify for the credits is to spend 5% of the total cost of the project.
A more restrictive interpretation of “begin construction,” however, could turn the tax credit language into a dead letter, especially when combined with the rest of the administration’s full-spectrum legal assault on renewable energy.
Grassley said that new guidance is expected within two weeks, and that “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent, I intend to continue to object to the consideration of these Treasury nominees.”Grassley has a long history with production tax credits for wind energy, playing a pivotal role in their extension in 2015. “As the father of the first wind energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent,” Grassley said at the time. “The five-year extension for wind energy brings about the best possible long-term outcome that provides certainty, predictability and a responsible phase-down of a tax incentive for a renewable energy source.”
Almost 60% of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind turbines, the highest proportion of any state, according to Energy Information Administration data.
Utah Senator John Curtis has joined Grassley in placing a hold on nominees, delaying their vote before the whole Senate, according to Politico’s Joshua Siegel. Grassley and Curtis, alongside Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were unable to get a meeting with the Treasury Department to discuss the guidance, Siegel reported.
On Puerto Rico’s water crisis, LNG’s tax scam, a nuclear safety scandal
Current conditions: Wildfire smoke in Alberta, Canada, is so thick that the airport had a visibility of just about 650 feet, and the air quality index hit 2241, 10 times higher than “hazardous” levels • At least 10 Chinese provinces are on alert for heavy rainfall this week, with as much as 8 inches deluging Beijing • Prolonged heatwave conditions in southeastern Europe are raising the risk of fires.
A wildfire in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park that has burned for nearly a month has grown into the largest blaze in the continental U.S. so far this year, scorching more than 114,000 acres as of this weekend. The Dragon Bravo fire, near the park’s North Rim, is expected to increase in size in the coming days due to the exceptionally dry, hot weather, The New York Times reported.
It’s far from the only major fire burning out West. The Gifford fire in California grew to nearly 40,000 acres on Sunday within the Los Padres National Forest in south-central California. The fire was just 3% contained as of late Sunday evening, according to the federal wildfire tracker, InciWeb. Last month, my colleague Jeva Lange wrote that the “next big wave” of wildfires out West “could happen any day.” As she reported, “the components for a bad fire season are all there — the landscape just needs a spark.” Lightning has been a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest, where thunderstorms led to 72 fires in two Oregon counties during just one night in June. A lightning strike is the likely cause of the Dragon Bravo fire.
One of many anti-corruption protests in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Jose Jimenez/Getty Images
Nearly eight years after Hurricane María decimated Puerto Rico’s power grid, the United States’ most populous territory still suffers electricity outages every week and faces rising utility bills. But the island of more than 3 million American citizens is reeling this week from yet another utility failure: Water outages. As many as 180,000 households in Puerto Rico lost access to running water last week, and thousands are still without service. The electricity and water issues are combined. Updates on the state-run water utility’s X page indicated that several water pumping stations are out of service due to a lack of electricity. Governor Jenniffer González Colón called in the National Guard to help distribute water.
It’s just the latest crisis afflicting the Caribbean territory’s basic infrastructure as the island enters the peak of hurricane season. The local government last month escalated its battle with New Fortress Energy, the financially troubled New York-based gas company that provides its fuel and operates its power plants. González Colón is considering ending the island’s contract with LUMA Energy, the private consortium that controls the power grid. Faced with ongoing blackouts, the government just scrapped Puerto Rico’s renewable energy targets and extended the life of a highly polluting coal plant, threatening devastating health consequences for the surrounding community, as I reported earlier this summer for the MIT Technology Review. And, despite González Colón’s chummy relationship with President Donald Trump, federal funding for Puerto Rico’s post-María reconstruction is still trickling out almost a decade after the storm.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is bringing tax credits for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles to a swift end on the grounds that the technologies are mature and therefore no longer worth subsidizing. Yet America’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas is seeking “alternative fuel” tax credits simply for running its vessels on the fuel they carry, exactly as they’re designed to do. The tax credit, originally signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2005, was intended to incentivize the switch from gasoline and diesel to biofuels, LNG, and liquid fuels derived from coal. The tankers Cheniere Energy, the nation’s top overseas seller of American LNG, uses to ship its fuel around the world are built to boil off fuel from the tanks that hold its cargo. But the company is seeking federal rewards for using the LNG, according to an investigation by Inside Climate News. If the Internal Revenue Service approves the request, Cheniere could net more than $140 million.
The Trump administration has vowed to cut back and streamline nuclear regulations to make building new reactors easier, potentially compromising safety. The effort has stirred enough drama at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a Republican commissioner resigned last week. Now a scandal at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in Florida is providing a timely reminder of why strict oversight exists over atomic energy stations. An inspection report on the plant, owned by Florida Power & Light, revealed that workers feared reporting safety problems to upper management lest they face retaliation. And that comes right as a database shows safety violations soared over the past year, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The investigation came as the Department of Energy discovered four radioactive wasp nests at the defunct Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina. The finding suggested that environmental contamination at the site, which previously developed weapons-grade material for the U.S. government, is more extensive than previously understood. While advocates of nuclear energy draw clear distinctions with the military-related sites, political upheaval at the federal agency that oversees radioactive materials could put the growing bipartisan consensus on building more reactors at risk.
Tesla’s board approved a $30 billion payout of shares to Elon Musk in a new compensation deal, according to a regulatory filing on Monday that followed the billionaire's threat to leave the electric automaker if he didn't receive more stock.
The move came days after a jury in Florida found flaws in Tesla’s self-driving software partly responsible for a crash that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend, The New York Times reported. If Friday's verdict holds, Tesla will be on the hook for as much as $243 million in damages to the parents of the woman and her boyfriend. The jury decided that Tesla bore 33% of the blame for the crash. Tesla said it would appeal. It’s a setback for Musk’s driverless ambitions. As Tesla’s human-driven automotive offerings stalled out last year, Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman wrote that, “sure, maybe it will be the one to crack full autonomous driving. But in practical terms, that tech is not close to reality, and Tesla’s version of it has encountered its fair share of bugs and been sued over crashes.”
New research from Stanford University has “upended conventional wisdom about electric vehicle battery management. Contrary to popular belief, a more dynamic driving style could significantly extend the lifespan of EV batteries,” including not charging the units to 100%.
The department creates a seemingly impossible new permitting criteria for renewable energy.
The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.
Hypothetically, this could kill off any solar or wind project going through permitting that is sited on federal lands, because these facilities would technically be less energy dense than coal, gas, and nuclear plants. This is irrespective of the potential benefits solar and wind may have for the environment or reducing carbon emissions – none of which are mentioned in the order.
“Gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects hold America back from achieving U.S. Energy Dominance while weighing heavily on the American taxpayer and environment,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement included in a press release announcing the move. “By considering energy generation optimization, the Department will be able to better manage our federal lands, minimize environmental impact, and maximize energy development to further President Donald Trump’s energy goals.”
Here’s how this new regime, which I and many in the energy sector are now suddenly trying to wrap their heads around, is apparently going to work: solar and wind facilities will now be evaluated based on their “capacity density,” which is calculated based on the ratio of acres used for a project compared to its power generation capacity. If a project has a lower “capacity density” than what the department considers to be a “reasonable alternative,” then it may no longer be able to get a permit.
“On a technology-neutral basis,” the order states, “wind and solar projects use disproportionate Federal lands relative to their energy generation when compared to other energy sources, like nuclear, gas, and coal.” The document going on to give an example, claiming that data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows an advanced nuclear plant uses less federal acreage than an offshore wind farm and “thus, when there are reasonable alternatives that can generate the same amount of or more energy on far less Federal land, wind and solar projects may unnecessarily and unduly degrade Federal lands.” The order also includes a chart comparing the capacity density of wind and solar facilities to conventional nuclear, gas, and coal, as well as geothermal, and claims that these sources are superior as well. The document does not reference hydropower.
There’s also a whole host of other implications in this order. Crucially, does the Interior expect that by choking off the flow of permits, cities and companies will just pony up to build what the Trump administration considers “reasonable alternatives” instead? Is the federal government going to tell communities in Nevada, for example, that they must suddenly build gas plants in the desert instead of solar farms to meet their increasing energy needs?
In any case, much more is coming, as this order simply built off of a separate secretarial order earlier this week commanding staff to prepare a litany of recommendations on ending alleged “preferential treatment” for solar and wind facilities. In other words hold my beer – and hold onto yours, too.