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The former Department of Energy chief commercialization officer talks about the public sector’s role in catalyzing new clean energy.
Vanessa Chan didn’t think she had the right temperament to work in government. After a 13-year stint as a partner at McKinsey, six years as a partner at the angel investment firm Robin Hood Ventures, and four years at the University of Pennsylvania, most recently as professor of practice in innovation and entrepreneurship, Chan considered herself to be an impatient, get-it-done type — anathema to the traditionally slow, procedurally complex work of governing.
But the Energy Act of 2020 had just formalized a new role within the Department of Energy ideally suited to her skills: Chief Commercialization Officer, which would also serve as the director of the Office of Technology Transitions. Who would fill these dual roles was to be the decision of then-incoming Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, who found a kindred spirit in Chan. Under her leadership, Chan told me, “I found someone who’s less patient than me.”
In her four years at the DOE, the OTT’s annual budget — which she referred to as “literally a rounding error to most people” — grew from $12.6 million to $56.6 million. She leveraged it to its fullest extent, establishing a precedent for the potential of this small but mighty office. Chan spearheaded the “Pathways to Commercial Liftoff” reports that provide investors with a path to market for the most important decarbonization technologies, and announced over $41 million in funding for 50 clean energy projects across all of the nations 17 national labs through the Technology Commercialization Fund.
She also changed the way the DOE, national labs, venture capitalists, and startups alike talk about getting ready for primetime with the Adoption Readiness Level framework, which put a much-needed focus on factors such as economic viability, regulatory hurdles, and supply chain constraints in the same way that the established Technology Readiness Levels, pioneered by NASA, focus on the question of whether a technology actually works.
Now Chan is back at the University of Pennsylvania in a new, extremely apt role: the Inaugural Vice-Dean of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She’s weaving lessons learned from her time in the public and private sectors into academia, where her goal is to help incorporate real-world skills into the education of engineers and PhD scholars to prime them for maximum impact upon graduation.
“It’s such a disservice if you invent something and it never sees the light of day,” she told me. “So we need to make sure that isn’t happening and we increase our odds of things making it to the market.”
Over two separate interviews, one before President Trump’s inauguration and one after, I asked Chan how her work with the DOE has helped climate technologies move from the lab to the market, the challenges that remain, and what to keep an eye on in the new administration. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get recruited for this job? Was government work even on your radar before?
No, this was never on my vision board. But the way in which this came about was in 2016, there was a workshop that was being led by DOE on a potential new foundation that was going to be focused on commercialization. And one of my former clients told the person running the workshop, if you’re talking about technology commercialization, you have to talk to Vanessa Chan. And when I was there, I just yapped off about all the issues that I see with commercialization and what the federal government should be doing about it. And I didn’t think anything of it.
And then fast forward to 2020, I get this cryptic email saying, “Hey, the Biden-Harris administration is interested in you.” I spent all the time during the interview [with the Biden-Harris team] going, “Here’s my thing about commercialization, but I don’t think you guys want me, because I’m someone who works really fast. I have no patience for bureaucracy. I like to disrupt. I don’t like the status quo.” And they’re like, that’s exactly what we want.
How did the DOE, and the OTT in particular, really undergo a shift in the Biden administration?
Historically, DOE has been very focused on research and development. And then when the [Bipartisan Infrastructure Law] and [Inflation Reduction Act] got passed, now there was half-a-trillion dollars going towards demonstration and deployment, and it became a lot more fun being the chief commercialization officer.
The mantra that we’ve had is that the clean energy transition — and quite frankly, commercialization — has to be private sector-led but government-enabled. Because in the end, it’s the private sector that’s actually commercializing. It’s not the government. DOD can buy stuff to bring things to market, but DOE, we’re an enabler. And unless the private sector has sustainable, viable economic models, nothing will ever be commercialized.
How does your work intersect with other DOE agencies that are focused on commercialization, like the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Loan Programs Office?
I worked very closely with all of them. In particular, one of the things that was really important to do was to get us on the same page of what it actually means to deploy technologies. So I quarterbacked an effort called the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff, which OCED, LPO, and any program office that was touching research, development, demonstration, and deployment was a part of.
If we use hydrogen hubs as an example, OCED was given $8 billion towards hydrogen. When we did the hydrogen liftoff report, what we found was a few things. One is that electrolyzer costs are super high, and so we have to be able to drive those downward to make the unit economics work. We have an issue where there is no midstream infrastructure. We also had a chicken-and-the egg, which is pretty classic: No one wants to buy hydrogen until the supply chain is stood up, [but] the supply chain doesn’t want to stand up until they know they actually have offtake agreements.
What we did with OCED was, we took $7 billion to invest in seven hydrogen hubs across the nation, and then we reserved $1 billion to create an offtake demand mechanism. And that’s the first time ever that the federal government has actually focused on a demand activation program.
Have these liftoff reports been well received on both sides of the aisle? Do you think they’ll continue to be referenced in the new administration?
We were very, very, very fact-driven. There’s no policy by design, because in the end it’s all about, what does it take for a technology to make sense, for it to be in the market? So it’s not Republican or Democratic, it’s just — what does the private sector have to do? I’m really hoping they’re not seen as partisan and really more a synthesis of what’s required for the private sector to actually scale technology.
What are some additional successes from your time at the DOE?
An example program is MAKE IT, which is Manufacturing of Advanced Key Energy Infrastructure Technologies, which was a program that we created with OCED in order to figure out ways in which we could try to help bolster manufacturing across the nation. We also have this program called EPIC, the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters, and we have funded over 80 incubators and accelerators across the nation, which are supporting startups.
We’ve created a voucher program for startups and smaller organizations — sometimes there’s very tactical things that they need help on, and they need a small dollar amount, like a couple-hundred-thousand-dollars to tackle that. We’re like, Oh, you need to do techno-economic analysis? We’re going to pair you with this organization here that can do it, and you don’t have to negotiate anything with them. We’re just going to send them the money, you’re given a voucher, and you just call them.
When I talk with venture capitalists, something that often comes up is the difficulty of getting startups through the so-called Valley of Death, the funding gap between a company’s initial rounds and its commercial scale-up. How do you think about the public sector’s role in helping companies through this stage?
First of all, this private sector-led, government-enabled idea around commercialization is really important. And the work we’ve done with Liftoff and how we’ve gotten money out the door has really worked, because for every dollar going out the door from DOE, we’ve seen $6 matching from the private sector. That in itself is showing that there’s a way for the public sector to nudge the private sector to act.
What I’ll tell you, though, is that I think there needs to be a wholesale reframe around how the private sector thinks about investments and the returns that they want on them. Right now, we are in the Squid Games, where everyone is first in line to be sixth or seventh, no one is first in line to be first, second, or third, because they know the person who is first, second, or third is going to lose money. So what we need to do is figure out, how do we have the ecosystem crowdsource the first 10 of a kind, so that we get to the tipping point where the unit economics are working? How do we get the private sector to promise to buy technologies when they’re not quite there? How do we in the public sector help on the back end?
What are other primary barriers to commercialization that you see?
Another big barrier is that the time clock for moving up the learning curve and moving down the cost curve is quite long in some of these hard-tech technologies. And so the challenge is, how do we convince CEOs to make investments in something which is not going to benefit them, but benefit a CEO two or three down the line? Humans just don’t work that way, right? They’re all about earnings per share and quarterly earning reports and so forth.
Now the challenge is, if we don’t do it, then countries like China are going to do it. This is what happened in solar: We invented the technology, but China was willing to take a loss in order to get up the learning curve and drive down the cost curve, and we need to figure out how to do the same.
Have you been in touch with anyone from the Trump administration? Do you know who your successor will be?
No idea. My team didn’t even know who I was until day one. But what I’ll tell you is that OTT has really strong bipartisan support because we’re commercializing technologies, which is creating jobs, and I think everyone understands the importance of this. Also for the [Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation] I was very deliberate with the other ex officio board members to make sure we had a bipartisan board. We have 13 board members that we appointed here at DOE, and I have representation from every single administration since George H.W. Bush, including two Trump appointees.
I really do hope that whoever sits in my seat will reach out, and I left a letter offering that, too. Hopefully they do give me a call because I really want to wish them every success in the work that they’re doing.
What’s it like to be back at the University of Pennsylvania, watching this new administration from a civilian perspective?
This was the best job ever, so I’m just sad in general to not be at the Department of Energy because I really enjoyed the work that we were doing there. A lot of the money from the BIL and IRA were used to catalyze many, many red states. I am hopeful that people in power recognize this and are going to do right by those counties. Because I think, in the end, what we’re trying to do is really help with American jobs and competitiveness.
Any thoughts on the executive order that’s frozen disbursement of funds from BIL and IRA?
I don’t know, because I always think it’s not right to be on the outside in, trying to figure out what different executive orders are trying to say or not say. We all have to wait to see how these get executed upon.
What do you think people should be keeping an eye on to gauge the impacts that these sweeping executive orders are having?
In my mind it’s really, is the private sector spooked? Are they going to continue to invest the money that’s needed for these manufacturing plants to continue and so forth? Because in the end, it’s the private sector that actually is driving American competitiveness — the federal government is a catalyst. And so I think what I’d be looking to is the private sector. Are they stopping the momentum that we helped to kickstart?
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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.
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 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.