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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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On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.
From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.
The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.
Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.
The city of Halstead, under pressure from these locals, is now developing a battery storage zoning ordinance – and explicitly saying this will not mean a project “has been formally approved or can be built in the city.” The backlash is now so intense that Halstead’s mayor Dennis Travis has taken to fighting back against criticism on Facebook, writing in a series of posts about individuals in his community “trying to rule by MOB mentality, pushing out false information and intimidating” volunteers working for the city. “I’m exercising MY First Amendment Right and well, if you don’t like it you can kiss my grits,” he wrote. Other posts shared information on the financial benefits of building battery storage and facts to dispel worries about battery fires. “You might want to close your eyes and wish this technology away but that is not going to happen,” another post declared. “Isn’t it better to be able to regulate it in our community?”
What’s happening in Halstead is a sign of a slow-spreading public relations wildfire that’s nudging communities that were already skeptical of battery storage over the edge into outright opposition. We’re not seeing any evidence that communities are transforming from supportive to hostile – but we are seeing new areas that were predisposed to dislike battery storage grow more aggressive and aghast at the idea of new projects.
Heatmap Pro data actually tells the story quite neatly: Halstead is located in Harvey County, a high risk area for developers that already has a restrictive ordinance banning all large-scale solar and wind development. There’s nothing about battery storage on the books yet, but our own opinion poll modeling shows that individuals in this county are more likely to oppose battery storage than renewable energy.
We’re seeing this phenomenon play out elsewhere as well. Take Fannin County, Texas, where residents have begun brandishing the example of Moss Landing to rail against an Engie battery storage project, and our modeling similarly shows an intense hostility to battery projects. The same can be said about Brooklyn, New York, where anti-battery concerns are far higher in our polling forecasts – and opposition to battery storage on the ground is gaining steam.