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Vineyard Wind has given offshore opponents some powerful new ammunition.
Vineyard Wind’s turbine blade failure couldn’t have come at a worse time for offshore wind.
The industry is still dealing with the high inflation and supply chain issues that turned 2023 into a parade of horribles. Now opponents to American offshore wind — most prominently former president Donald Trump — are one election away from storming the gates of the federal bureaucracy. We don’t know yet whether the Vineyard Wind blade breakage was a fluke or the result of a problem with the blades themselves, but that hasn’t stopped critics of offshore wind from shouting about it — and with fiberglass still washing up on Nantucket beaches, they’re tough to ignore.
Major errors like blade failures are incredibly rare, but — like the risk of whale injuries — are precisely the sort of negative externality activists have had a tendency of magnifying when fighting offshore wind. Should Trump win in November and retake the White House, he could indefinitely stall projects in the nascent sector across both coasts, as operations often fall under the scope of federal control.
“If Donald Trump is elected, he has said on Day 1 he would terminate offshore approvals. He has said he will do that, and frankly he generally keeps his word,” Bruce Afrin, an attorney representing activists challenging projects off the New Jersey coastline, told me. And while he sees Vineyard Wind becoming a focal point of that effort, he also told me, “I’m sure they’re going to take a broader approach.”
Nearly all offshore wind projects have to face at least some form of federal review. Projects at commercial scale will usually be in federal waters — more than 3 miles from a state’s coastline — because the best wind is further from shore; in addition, permits may be required on endangered species and water regulations to build turbines or construct cabling.
Very few existing offshore wind projects have been fully permitted and reached the construction phase. There’s Revolution, Sunrise, Coastal Virginia, and, of course, Vineyard Wind, which is now in a work stoppage following the blade failure. Many other projects are still in the permitting process, per K&L Gates attorney Theodore Paradise, who advises project developers in the sector. Paradise told me data on how many projects are in the federal regulatory pipeline is scattered across various federal sources, making it “kind of an IKEA situation.”
Given how few projects have received all of their permits to date, this is a worrisome hypothetical to climate advocates and professionals working in offshore wind.
“Any project going through any of those gauntlets may be dead on arrival,” attorney Jeff Thaler, who consults on offshore and onshore wind projects, told me. “That’s the uncertainty and concern, and investors do not like uncertainty like that.”
Both Thaler and Paradise said regulators already take the risk of blade failures and a multitude of other potential project risks seriously. (This is why, for example, there are boat speed restrictions near offshore wind projects.) Not to mention that wind turbines are not a new technology and have been operating in much larger numbers offshore in Europe and China without much incident.
Those few projects in construction still face legal challenges. Coastal Virginia, for example, was allowed to continue construction despite a lawsuit from conservative legal groups over the risks posed to endangered whales. If re-elected, Trump and his Justice Department would have the opportunity to stop defending the government’s approvals of the project and side with the legal challengers.
Whether it would be possible for Trump to undo previously issued approvals is a thornier question. Afrin argued that a Trump administration both could and would re-examine previous approvals related to offshore wind projects, under the justification that the government erroneously issued them or failed to properly conduct a specific analysis. Existing environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, Afrin said, give “enormous tools” to “those who organize and have standing” in litigation.
Paradise made an audible sigh when I asked whether a future Trump administration could feasibly go that far.
“Some folks you’ll talk to might say, oh [they have] approved it, we’re all set,” he said. “If the administration were to change, you can imagine a scenario where somebody sues on an issued permit and the Justice Department decides not to defend the agency action, or maybe they want to settle with the folks bringing the suit.”
Some permits may be impossible to undo because project developers have a vested right in a regulatory approval depending on how far along they are, Thaler said. But if construction has yet to begin and more permits are needed, a Trump administration could potentially have an opening.
The risk lies in what happens to public perception and political maneuvering. Thaler compared what’s happening with Vineyard Wind to the PR backlash against Boeing after a door came out of a plane in the middle of a flight. “Any time this gets attention it will have an impact. People will be raising more concerns. Those who have been opposing will be emboldened, or energized, no pun intended.” That said, after the door debacle, “People kept flying,” Thaler said. “There was a suspension of that particular jet type for a while, but then people resumed flying around the world.”
Scrutinizing offshore wind tech is already on the table to some in the Trumpworld braintrust. Oliver McPherson-Smith, head of energy and environment issues for the America First Policy Institute, told Axios last year that he wants regulators in a future administration to look “very, very closely at the environmental effects of all new technologies, including offshore wind.” Advocates fighting offshore wind certainly feel emboldened by the Vineyard Wind blade failure and are looking to magnify the importance of its environmental impacts. Mandy Gunasekara — the author of Project 2025’s section on dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency — on Monday retweeted claims that the failure was a “disaster” that environmentalists were “downplaying.”
Later this week, representatives from Vineyard Wind will appear in court to defend against a lawsuit from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, seeking to stop the project on behalf of people in the commercial fishing industry. The group cited the blade failure in a press release about the case: “The federal government is required to ensure safety and environmental protection by law when approving projects like this — and they knew this project had environmental risks like the one that came to pass here — but they let it happen anyway.”
Some offshore wind industry backers are optimistic about the ability for the industry to weather the storm of a future Trump administration, however. Sam Salustro, vice president of strategic communication for Oceantic, formerly known as the Business Network for Offshore Wind, told me that he thinks it’s not a done deal Trump puts the breaks on offshore wind permits given the “enormous amount of investment and job creation that is happening from this dependable pipeline of projects coming through.”
He also pointed to examples of Republican support from folks like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who recently attended the christening of a new port in his state of Louisiana that will serve the offshore wind industry. “This is an industry that has robust bipartisan support from the people who know it best,” he said.
When asked specifically about how the Vineyard Wind blade failure would impact the future of U.S. industry growth, Salustro told me he didn’t immediately know how to respond. Ultimately, he settled on a brighter outlook. “We still have three other projects that are continuing development. This is a safety issue that is going to be addressed. From global data, we understand how rare it is, so I don’t see it as a huge hiccup to the industry like inflation was. Probably limited impact.”
Dave Rogers of Sierra Club, meanwhile, acknowledged that while the Vineyard Wind situation is “not great,” there is “a long track record we can point to” on project efficacy and environmental safety. While its critical regulators and companies figure out what went awry here, “it’s critical that it doesn’t actually slow down the deployment of offshore wind.”
“It’s not necessarily our job to get out ahead of [this],” Rogers said, “but we do think it’s important this is contextualized on a global scale so that people understand how rare something like this is and that offshore wind is going to be a key part of a decarbonization strategy in the U.S.”
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.