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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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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.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
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.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
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.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.