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Spotlight

Offshore Wind Opponents Zero in on Their Next Two Targets

Will Sunrise Wind and Revolution Wind get the Trump treatment?

Offshore wind and a whale.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The sharks of opposition are circling the American offshore wind industry, as they await the federal government’s next victims.

This week, we received news that Equinor – developer of the Empire Wind project – is inching towards potentially canceling development after a visit to Washington and the White House yielded little success. In addition, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox Business that the department is now reviewing all offshore wind permits issued under the Biden administration.

“What people don’t realize, billions of tons of rock are poured into the ocean before they can begin the years of pile driving,” Burgum told Fox Business, claiming the review of offshore wind permits that Trump ordered uncovered new data about Empire Wind “that was never released to the public” showing the approval “lacked total rigor.”

Meanwhile, coastal opponents of wind energy have moved onto other projects: Orsted’s Revolution Wind project near Rhode Island and Sunrise Wind project off New York’s coastline. In petitions to the EPA, two anti-wind groups – Green Oceans and Protect Our Coast N.J. – have asked the agency to rescind key permits for air emissions and water discharges, asserting the federal government moved too fast to get them approved.

In addition, an environmental consultancy hired by Green Oceans called Planet A* Strategies sent a detailed report to Burgum examining “the background, legal requirements, and data used in Federal agency decision-making regarding offshore wind development.” The consultancy claimed it had found actual violations of environmental law and that facts in the report “include material information that may have been omitted or misrepresented by offshore wind project developers and governmental decisionmakers.” Planet A* Strategies is run by Maureen Koatz, a former policy director for the Nuclear Energy Institute and Senate staffer.

Green Oceans has also retained federal lobbyists from two different firms, a noteworthy move for an organization that previously had no obvious government affairs footprint.

It is likely no coincidence that all of these petitions and this report are all being filed right now, as we saw a similar flurry of activity surround Empire Wind before its stop work order was issued. Similar noise occurred in the days before Atlantic Shores lost a key EPA permit, sending work on the project into indefinite hiatus. For this reason, I suspect we will see more actions threatening other permits for offshore wind projects – and will be surprised if that doesn’t happen.

But at least this time there’s a countervailing force, as climate-minded environmentalists now swoop in too. Late Thursday, 10 major environmental non-profits – including NRDC, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Wildlife Federation – filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit that was filed by Democrat-led states against Trump’s blanket ban on offshore wind approvals and leases. I obtained a copy of the filing this afternoon from NRDC.

The amicus brief focuses on the argument that Trump’s order and the government’s compliance with it violates the Administrative Procedures Act. This comes after months of relative inaction from the environmental movement, other than a handful of rallies and public statements against the offshore wind ban.

The brief also declares that “when robust environmental review and permitting frameworks are applied, the responsible deployment of U.S. wind power is compatible with wildlife protection, public health, community protection and economic development,” and that the agencies “have taken an abrupt, 180-degree turn in their approach to wind permitting, without acknowledging this about-face, and without providing any justification, let alone a reasoned one.”

Yellow

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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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