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A personal account of the final act in the fight to pass the United States’ first comprehensive climate law
One year ago, the Inflation Reduction Act became law, throwing the full financial might of the federal government behind the clean energy transition and forever changing the fight against climate change.
Recent polling finds that too few recognize the historical significance of the hundreds of billions of dollars the law invests to make clean energy cheaper for American households, businesses, and industries.
Even fewer people appreciate just how close we came to losing it all.
This is a personal account of the final days of the fight to pass the nation’s first comprehensive climate law, and of how the Inflation Reduction Act remarkably arose from the ashes of near-defeat.
On July 14, 2022, just over a month before eventually becoming law, the budget bill that would eventually become known as the Inflation Reduction Act died. Again.
That evening, Senator Joe Manchin, the coal-state Democrat from West Virginia, called Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to tell him he was done with the long-simmering inter-party negotiations striving to craft a budget bill that could unite all 50 Democratic senators and pass the evenly divided Senate. The stubborn hold-out had already dashed progressive dreams multiple times in the year and a half since the 117th Congress gaveled into session, including dealing the killing blow to the House-passed Build Back Better Act in December 2021.
The news was a shock. Less than two weeks earlier, over the Fourth of July weekend, I was told by Senate staffers party to the budget negotiations that a deal was imminent. They told me to prepare the REPEAT Project, a Princeton University team that I lead and that assesses the impacts of federal energy and climate policies as they are debated, to stand by to run the numbers on a new bill.
But in July 2022, inflation was running at nearly 9% and gasoline prices were over $5 per gallon in many parts of the U.S. Then we got one bad report on the rate of inflation after another, prompting Manchin to say he could no longer support any additional government spending that might further fuel inflation.
Manchin called Schumer on July 14 to say he could no longer continue negotiations, and that he would not support legislation that included any clean energy or climate spending — leaving only a slimmed-down bill focused on health care left in play.
"DEVASTATING... utterly SENSELESS!" I tweeted at the time, using REPEAT Project modeling to illustrate the massive climate gap we would have faced, had that been the end of the story.
Courtesy of the REPEAT Project at Princeton University's Zero Lab
And it really did seem like the end.
The tone I heard from Senate staffers that day was very different from the several prior ‘false demises’ of the budget negotiations we had all endured. They were despondent. “I feel like I just wasted the last six years of my life,” one staffer texted me on July 14. So did I.
The next day, Manchin issued an ultimatum: Either Democrats could quickly pass a “skinny” budget bill focused only on health care or they could wait a few weeks to see if inflation improved and try negotiating a larger package in August.
The problem: Basically no one thought inflation would meaningfully cool that quickly, and there was only a few weeks left to pass a law before the August recess, after which Congress would go into full campaign season and nothing would pass.
The game clock was winding down.
Then President Biden threw in the towel. He issued an official statement vowing to keep the climate fight up via executive action but urged the Senate to quickly pass a bill focused only on health care.
Schumer appeared poised to do just that, and a caucus meeting for Senate Democrats was set for the following Tuesday to discuss how to move forward. Since Congress only gets one shot at a budget reconciliation law per fiscal year, if they ended up passing a bill without any climate package, it was game over.
I had been working to advance federal climate policy since 2008. I lived through the demise of the last serious effort to pass a federal climate law in 2009 and 2010. I knew how rare these windows of opportunity to pass meaningful legislation are. And we’d just blown a once-in-a-decade chance. Would we have to wait until the 2030s for our next shot? Could we even survive another decade with the United States standing on the sidelines of the global climate fight?
By July 16, I had apparently had enough time to go through the various stages of grief, arriving at bargaining (or perhaps denial). “It’s just not okay to end like this, with Manchin walking away from the deal and the rest of the caucus just quietly accepting that!” I wrote in a text to a key Senate staffer. “There’s got to be at least a dozen [Senate] members who are furious and could be unwilling to accept that in the end, right?”
“Working on it 😄,” the staffer replied.
And just like that, while many gave up and others fumed, staff from just a handful of Senate offices and a rag-tag group of allied individuals and advocacy groups got back to what we’d been doing since the start: doggedly working the problem to find some way to passage.
Even then, I had very little faith our efforts would succeed. I just knew that the game clock had a few seconds left on it, time enough to run a couple more Hail Mary plays, and I wanted to be able to look my kids in the eye some day and say, “We failed, but we truly tried everything we could.”
So we got back to work.
So how did we get Manchin back to the negotiating table?
From my limited perspective, three things worked.
First, the concern that climate spending would stoke inflation was bogus. The budget deal under negotiation was doubly paid for, raising twice as much new revenue as it spent. What’s more, the spending plan was estimated to be in the ballpark to $30 to $50 billion per year spread over a decade, or less than 1% of our roughly six trillion dollar federal budget.
The climate spending was peanuts, and any honest macroeconomist would say that the budget deal would have a mild, fiscally contractionary effect at best or no effect on inflation at worst. Plus, the proposals specifically took aim at two key drivers of inflation: health care costs and energy costs.
Either Manchin was honest in his inflation fears but misappreciating the issues, or he was trying to give himself cover to scuttle the bill.
Our so-called “Never Give Up Caucus” took him at face value. To address his inflation concerns, allies succeeded in getting inflation-hawk-in-chief Larry Summers, the conservative leaning Penn-Wharton Budget Model team, and the deficit hawkish head of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget to tell Manchin (and the press) that the deal would cut the deficit and not raise prices.
Second, the many vested interests that stood to gain from the clean energy package were mobilized and pushed Manchin hard not to leave them high and dry.
This was always a key part of the political strategy of the clean energy package: rather than focus on pricing carbon emissions and making fossil energy more expensive (as Congress had attempted in 2009), the budget bill would instead provide a wide-ranging set of direct subsidies — tax credits, grants, loan programs — to make climate-friendly technologies cheaper and help build up manufacturing of clean energy components in the U.S. Concentrated beneficiaries create organized power to back the bill. That was the theory, and it was time to put it to the test.
The pressure campaign to get Manchin back to the table was “across the board,” according to National Wildlife Federation CEO Collin O’Mara, who was one of the most dogged and effective organizers during those pivotal final days.
Executives from renewable energy companies reminded Manchin that billions of dollars of investment were at stake.
The United Mine Workers of America pushed Manchin not to walk away from his promise to create a permanent trust fund for miners suffering from black lung disease, which the budget bill would do.
In my personal estimation, the most effective voices were probably from those sectors Manchin had styled himself as personally championing as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee: carbon capture, nuclear power, hydrogen, and advanced manufacturing.
A senior executive with a utility operating in Appalachia reportedly told Manchin: “We know coal plants are ultimately going to close. What is going to replace them? What are the jobs? What are we transitioning to? In this case, we are going to explore hydrogen, new nuclear and get manufacturing in the state.”
Manchin received incoming pressure to pass a bill from the Carbon Capture Coalition, oil companies like BP with big plans to invest in hydrogen, and Nucor, the nation’s largest steel maker, which planned new investments in West Virginia in part to supply growing demand for steel for burgeoning renewable energy industries.
Utilities like Constellation and Duke reminded Manchin that this law was our best shot at preserving the nation’s existing nuclear fleet, which provides about a fifth of our electricity without contributing to air pollution or climate change.
Bill Gates, who has invested in nuclear and energy storage startups, called Manchin personally. And executives at a Gates-backed battery company with plans for a West Virginia manufacturing hub explained to Manchin’s staff how the bill’s incentives would accelerate their growth trajectory.
Third, a few key senators that Manchin personally trusted or respected, including John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Chris Coons of Delaware, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, reportedly pressed him with direct personal appeals.
I imagine their pitches either made the political case — did Manchin really want to send his party into the midterms having utterly failed on their domestic policy agenda? — or a personal one, emphasizing the opportunity to secure his legacy and the admiration of his grandchildren.
I don’t think we should discount the importance of these personal appeals. At the end of the day, senators are humans too. They crave the respect of their colleagues (at least those they admire). And everyone wants to be the hero of their own story, not the villain.
Which of these (or other parallel efforts I don't know about) pushed Manchin back to the table? Who knows what went through his mind in the end. But somehow, against virtually all expectations, it worked.
We didn’t know it until later, but by as early as Tuesday, July 19, Manchin and Schumer, with just a couple key aids each, began meeting in secret somewhere in the Senate offices and got back to work.
No one else had any idea this was happening.
Like others working to save the bill, I spent the next week continuing to talk to press, allies, congressional staff, etc., marshaling talking points and data, mobilizing various interests to pressure Manchin, and doing everything we could to convince the stubborn senator to make a deal that would get a climate package into law. Little did we know, he was already back at it.
In fact, a little over a week later, on Wednesday, July 27, Manchin issued a statement that shocked everyone: He and Leader Schumer had reached a deal after all and were unveiling a full-fledged bill to be called “The Inflation Reduction Act.”
“The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 addresses our nation’s energy and climate crisis by adopting commonsense solutions through strategic and historic investments that allow us to decarbonize while ensuring American energy is affordable, reliable, clean and secure,” Manchin wrote.
The full text of the bill dropped later that evening, and we were blown away to see how much of the original climate package from the ill-fated Build Back Better Act was retained by this new legislation.
The deal contained roughly $370 billion in estimated climate and clean energy spending, an historic package. All the key tax incentives were still in the proposal, including credits for clean electricity, electric vehicles, and heat pumps. Major grant programs were funded at similar levels. Even a new fee on methane pollution from the oil and gas sector had survived. In fact, a tax credit for U.S. clean energy manufacturing had even been expanded, apparently at Manchin’s request, to support production of batteries and their components and the mining and processing of critical minerals.
Rather than lose it all, we were poised to win nearly everything we’d hoped for.
“Holy shit. Stunned, but in a good way,” wrote Senator Tina Smith, a tireless advocate for the climate package, on Twitter. “$370B for climate and energy … BFD.”
It took us a couple weeks to run the numbers, but once we did, REPEAT Project estimated on August 4 that the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA (pronounce it like your friendly Uncle Ira!), would cut emissions by about one billion metric tons per year in 2030 and retained about 80% of the cumulative emissions reductions of the larger Build Back Better package.
Courtesy of the REPEAT Project at Princeton University's Zero Lab
IRA could get the United States to about 42% below our peak historical emissions by 2030, we estimated at the time. (REPEAT Project’s latest updated analysis published last month revises 2030 emissions under IRA to 37-41% below peak.) That was still short of the target of 50% below peak levels that President Biden had committed the country to on the world stage, but the proposed legislation was a true game changer that gave us a fighting chance to hit that goal.
After the Manchin-Schumer deal dropped, we were off to the races.
Manchin shifted from the package’s chief obstacle to its chief spokesperson, stumping for the bill on Fox and haranguing senators on the floor alongside Schumer to get IRA passed during an exhausting, overnight “vote-a-rama.” After a 16-hour process where Republicans proposed amendment after amendment to be shot down one by one by a united Democratic caucus — plus a little last minute drama wherein Kyrsten Sinema nearly killed the bill to save private equity firms billions in taxes — the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate at 3:17 PM on August 7, 51-50, with Vice President Harris casting the deciding vote.
The House passed IRA in turn on August 14, and President Biden signed it into law two days later. The rest, as they say, is history.
We’re still writing that history, but it’ll be forever changed by passage of the landmark law. And we almost lost it all.
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On the IEA’s latest report, flooding in LA, and Bill Gates’ bad news
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms tomorrow could spawn tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama • A massive wildfire on a biodiverse island in the Indian Ocean has been burning for nearly a month, threatening wildlife • Tropical Cyclone Zelia has made landfall in Western Australia with winds up to 180mph.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham has learned. Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide,” Brigham writes. “But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.”
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“This letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind,” Holzman writes. “Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president's executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine. If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.”
Heavy downpours triggered flooding and debris flows across Los Angeles County yesterday. A portion of the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most iconic roadways in America, is closed indefinitely due to mudslides near Malibu, an area devastated in last month’s fires. Duke’s Malibu, a famous oceanfront restaurant along the PCH, was inundated. The worst of the rain has passed now and many flood alerts have been canceled, but the cleanup has just begun.
Rain flows down a street outside a burned home.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Global electricity use is set to rise by 4% annually through 2027, “the equivalent of adding an amount greater than Japan’s annual electricity consumption every year,” according to the International Energy Agency’s new Electricity 2025 report. Here are some key points:
IEA
JPMorgan Chase clients have apparently been demanding more guidance about the climate crisis. As a result, the bank launched a new climate report authored by its global head of climate advisory, Sarah Kapnick, an atmospheric and oceanic scientist who was previously chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report seeks to build what Kapnick is calling “climate intuition” – the ability to use science to assess and make strategic investment decisions about the shifting climate. “Success in the New Climate Era hinges on our ability to integrate climate considerations into daily decision-making,” Kapnick writes. “Those who adapt will lead, while others risk falling behind.” Here’s a snippet from the report, to give you a sense of the tone and takeaways:
“Adhering to temperatures below 1.5C will require emissions reductions. Depending on your definition of 1.5C, they may require historic annual reductions and potentially carbon removal. Conversely, if you have a technical or financial view that carbon dioxide removal will not scale, you should assume there is a difficult path to 1.5C (i.e. emissions reductions to zero depending on your definition in 6, 15, or 30+ years). If that is the case, you need to plan for the physical manifestations of climate change and social responses that will ensue if your investment horizons are longer.”
Greenhouse gas leaks from supermarket refrigerators are estimated to create as much pollution each year as burning more than 30 million tons of coal.
Grantees told Heatmap they were informed that Bill Gates’ climate funding organization would not renew its support.
Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap has learned.
Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them. This pullback will not affect Breakthrough’s $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which funds an extensive portfolio of climate tech companies. Breakthrough’s fellowship program, which provides early-stage climate tech leaders with funding and assistance, will also remain intact, a spokesperson confirmed. They would not comment on whether this change will lead to layoffs at Breakthrough Energy.
“Bill Gates and Breakthrough Energy remain as committed as ever to using our voice and resources to advocate for the energy innovations needed to address climate change,” the Breakthrough spokesperson told me in a written statement. “We continue to believe that innovation in energy is essential for achieving global climate goals and securing a prosperous, sustainable world for future generations.”
Gates founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to help develop and deploy technologies that would help the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The organization made more than $96 million in grants in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
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Among its beneficiaries was the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based think tank that promotes technological solutions to climate change. (Despite having a similar name, it is not affiliatedwith Breakthrough Energy.) Last week, a representative from Breakthrough Energy told the institute’s executive director, Ted Nordhaus, that its funding would not be renewed. The Breakthrough Institute had previously received a two-year grant of about $1.2 million per year, which wrapped up this month.
“What we were told is that they are ceasing all of their climate grantmaking — zeroed out immediately after the USAID shutdown because Bill wants to refocus all of his grantmaking efforts on global health,” Nordhaus told me on Monday, referring to the Trump administration’s efforts to defund the United States Agency for International Development. “But it’s very clear that this wasn’t brought on solely by USAID. I had heard from several people that there was a big reassessment going on for a couple of months.”
The Breakthrough spokesperson disputed this characterization, and denied that cutbacks were due to the USAID shutdown or a shift in funding from climate to global health initiatives. The spokesperson also told me that some grantmaking budget remains, though they would not reveal how much.
As for Breakthrough Institute, the funding cut will primarily impact its agricultural program, which received about 90% of its budget from Breakthrough Energy. Nordhaus is trying to figure out how to keep that program afloat, while the institute’s other three areas of policy focus — energy and climate, nuclear innovation, and energy and development — remain largely unaffected.
Multiple other organizations confirmed to Heatmap that they also will not receive future grants from Breakthrough Energy. A representative for the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment, a trade organization for sustainability professionals, told me that Breakthrough had recently informed the group that it would not renew a $400,000 grant, which is set to wrap up this May. (ACLCA’s spokesperson also noted that the grant had not come with any indication that it would be renewed.) Another former grantee told me that while their organization is currently wrapping up a grant with Breakthrough and does not have anything in the works with them for this year, they expected that future funding would be impacted, though they did not explain why.
Breakthrough Energy made up a relatively small share — perhaps 1% — of climate philanthropy worldwide. Foundations and individuals around the world gave a total of $9 billion to $15 billion to climate causes in 2023, according to an analysis from the Climateworks Foundation.
But what has made Breakthrough Energy distinctive is its support for policy and advocacy groups that promote a wide range of technological solutions, including nuclear energy and direct air capture, to fight climate change.
“Their presence will be missed,” said the CEO of another climate nonprofit who was notified by Breakthrough that its funding would not be renewed. Breakthrough Energy “was one of the few funders supporting pragmatic research and advocacy work that pushed at neglected areas such as the need for zero-carbon firm power and accelerated energy innovation,” they added.
"Even if it’s a drop in the bucket, it still makes a difference,” another former grantee with a particularly large budget told me. This organization recently sent Breakthrough an inquiry about partnering up again and is waiting to hear back. “But for small organizations, it’s make it or break it.”
Speculation abounds as to the rationale behind Breakthrough’s funding cuts. “I have heard that one of the reasons that Bill decided to stop funding climate was that he concluded that there was so much money in climate that his money really wasn’t that important,” Nordhaus told me. But that is not true when it comes to agriculture, he said, which comprises about 12% of global emissions. ”There’s very little money for advocating for agriculture innovation to address the climate impacts of the ag sector,” Nordhaus told me.
Gates, who privately donated to a nonprofit affiliated with the Harris campaign in 2024 but did not endorse the Democrat, dined with Trump and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, for more than three hours at Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Day, he told Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker. He said that Trump was interested in the possibility of eradicating polio or developing an HIV vaccine. “I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation,” he told her, days before the inauguration.
Since then, Trump’s war on USAID has frozen funding to a polio eradication program and shut down the phase 1 clinical trial of an HIV vaccine in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda.
The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.
Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.
Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible harassment, injury, or potential deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.
The letter also requested “an immediate cession of construction” at four offshore wind projects with federal approvals that have begun construction: Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Vineyard Wind 1, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects.
“It is with a sense of real urgency we write you today,” the letter states, referencing Trump’s executive order targeting the offshore wind industry to ask that he go further. “[E]leven projects have already received approvals with four of those under construction. Leasing and permitting will be reviewed for these approved projects but may take time.”
I obtained the letter from Paul Kamenar, a longtime attorney in conservative legal circles currently with the D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, who told me the letter had been sent to the department this week. Kamenar is one of multiple attorneys involved in a lawsuit filed last year by Heartland and CFACT challenging permits for Dominion’s Coastal Virginia project over alleged potential impacts to the endangered North Atlantic right whale. We reported earlier this week that the government signaled in proceedings for that case it will review approvals for Coastal Virginia, the first indication that previous permits issued for offshore wind could be vulnerable to the Trump effect.
Kamenar described the request to Burgum as “a coalition letter,” and told me that “the new secretary there is sympathetic” to their complaints about offshore wind permits. “We’re hoping that this letter will basically reverse the letter[s] of authorizations, or have the agency go back,” Kamenar said, adding a message for Dominion and other developers implicated by the letter: “Just because the company has the approval doesn’t mean it’s all systems go.”
The Interior Department does not directly oversee NOAA – that’s the Commerce Department. But it does control the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which ultimately regulates all offshore wind development and issues final approvals.
Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Some signees of the document are part of a constellation of influential figures in the anti-renewables movement whose voices have been magnified in the new administration.
One of the letter’s two lead signatories is David Stevenson, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the Caesar Rodney Institute, an organization involved in legal battles against offshore wind projects under development in the Mid-Atlantic. The Institute says on its website it is a member of the State Policy Network, a broad constellation of think tanks, legal advocacy groups, and nonprofits.
Multiple activists who signed onto the letter work with the Save Right Whales Coalition, a network of local organizations and activists. Coalition members have appeared with Republican lawmakers at field hearings and rallies over the past few years attacking offshore wind. They became especially influential in GOP politics after being featured in a film by outspoken renewables critic and famous liberal-turned-conservative Michael Shellenberger, who is himself involved in the Coalition. His film, Thrown to the Wind, blew up in right-wing media circles because it claimed to correlate whale deaths with offshore wind development.
When asked if the Coalition was formally involved in this request of the administration, Lisa Linowes, a co-founder of the Coalition, replied in an email: “The Coalition was not a signer of the request.”
One cosigner sure to turn heads: John Droz, a pioneer in the anti-wind activist movement who for years has given talks and offered roadmaps on how best to stop renewables projects.
The letter also includes an endorsement from Mandy Davis, who was involved with the draft anti-wind executive order we told you was sent to the Trump transition team before inauguration. CFACT also co-signed that draft order when it was transmitted to the transition team, according to correspondence reviewed by Heatmap.
Most of the signatories to the letter list their locations. Many of the individuals unrelated to bigger organizations list their locations as in Delaware or Maryland. Only a few signatories on the letter have locations in other states dealing with offshore wind projects.
On its face, this letter represents a new stage of Trump’s war on offshore wind.
Yes, he has frozen leasing, along with most permitting activity and even public meetings related to pending projects. But the president’s executive order targeting offshore wind opened the door to rescinding leases and previous permits. Doing so would produce new, costly legal battles for developers and for publicly-regulated utilities, ratepayers. Over the past few weeks, offshore wind developers with projects that got their permits under Biden have sought to reassure investors that at least they’ll be fine.
If this new request is heeded, that calm will subside.
Beyond that, reversing these authorizations could represent a scandal for scientific integrity at NOAA – or at least NOAA’s Fisheries division, the National Marine Fisheries Service. Heeding the letter’s requests would mean revisiting the findings of career scientists for what developers may argue are purely political reasons, or at minimum arbitrary ones.
This wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened under Trump. In 2020, I used public records to prove that plans by career NOAA Fisheries employees to protect endangered whales from oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic were watered down after a political review. At the time, Democratic Representative Jared Huffman — now the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee — told me that my reporting was evidence of potential scientific integrity issues at NOAA and represented “blatant scientific and environmental malpractice at the highest order.”
It’s worth emphasizing how much this mattered, not just for science but literally in court, as the decision to allow more seismic testing for oil under Trump was challenged at the time on the grounds that it was made arbitrarily.
Peter Corkeron, a former NOAA scientist with expertise researching the North Atlantic right whale, reviewed the letter to Burgum and told me in an email that essentially, the anti-offshore wind movement is exploiting similar arguments made by conservationists about issues with the federal government’s protection of the species to target this sector. The federal regulator has for many years faced the ire of conservation activists, who’ve said it does not go far enough to protect endangered species from more longstanding threats like fishing and vessel strikes.
If NOAA were to bow to this request, Corkeron wrote, he would interpret that as the agency’s failure to fully protect the species in good faith instead becoming “suborned by the hydrocarbon exploitation industry as a way of eliminating a competing form of energy production that should, in time, prove more beneficial for whales than what we’re currently doing.”
“The point on cumulative impacts is, on face value, fair,” he said. “The problem is its lack of context. Cumulative impacts on North Atlantic right whales from offshore wind are possible. However, in the context of the cumulative impacts of the shipping (vessel strike kills, noise pollution), and fishing (death, maiming, failure to breed) industries, they’ll be insignificant. Because NOAA has never clearly set out to address ways to offset other impacts while developing the offshore wind industry, these additive impacts place a burden on this new industry in ways that existing, and more damaging, industries don’t have to address.”
CFACT responded to a request for comment by sending me a press release with the letter attached that was not publicly available, and did not respond to the climate criticisms by press time. David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute sent me a statement criticizing offshore wind energy and questioning its ability to “lower global emissions.”
“The goal is to pause construction until everything is reviewed,” Stevenson said. When asked if there was an outcome where a review led to projects being built, he said no, calling offshore wind an “environmental wrecking ball.”
Well, we’ll soon find out what the real wrecking ball is.