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Who thought that was a good idea?
In an altogether distressing debate in which climate was far from a main focus, the two candidates did have one notable exchange regarding the Paris Agreement. The 2015 treaty united most countries around the world in setting a goal to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, with 1.5 degrees as the ultimate target.
After Trump initially dodged a question about whether he would take action to slow the climate crisis, he then briefly noted “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O.”
While it is true that there was H2O during Trump’s presidency, Biden responded by criticizing Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. “I immediately [re]joined, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, at any one point, there’s no way back,” Biden said. “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
But according to a poll conducted last November by Heatmap, only 35% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat familiar” with the Paris Agreement at all, perhaps making it an odd choice to anchor the debate’s one exchange around climate. By contrast, the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, didn’t come up once. (Not that they’re that familiar with the IRA, either.) Solar, wind, carbon emissions — all terms that resonate with Americans, none of which were mentioned.
Of his decisions to leave the Paris Agreement in 2017, Trump claimed, “The Paris Accord was going to cost us $1 trillion,” while it would cost China, Russia, and India “nothing.”
The $1 trillion number actually appears to be a discount on Trump’s previously cited estimate. In his Rose Garden address announcing his decision to exit the agreement, he said that by 2040, compliance would entail a cost to the economy that would approach “$3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs,” citing a study conducted by NERA Economic Consulting.
According to the fact-checking website PolitiFact, the study’s authors were explicit that these projections are highly uncertain and do not take into account all the job gains and GDP growth that could be associated with the energy transition. PolitiFact also said NERA put forth a news release (which now appears to be unavailable online) stating that "the Trump administration selectively used results" from its study, and that “NERA’s study was not a cost-benefit analysis of the Paris Agreement, nor does it purport to be one.”
When Trump said that China, Russia, and India would not have financial commitments under the Paris Agreement, he was perhaps referencing the obligation (which the Paris Agreement reaffirmed) for wealthier nations like the U.S. to direct hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations to both aid their transition to clean energy and help them adapt to the impacts of climate change. It’s true that there’s controversy around whether China or India, which have giant (but still developing) economies, should either provide this funding or receive this funding. Russia, which joined the agreement in 2019, hasn’t really been a part of this conversation though.
In response to Trump’s defense of his decision to exit the agreement, Biden countered, “We were the only ones of consequence who were not members of the Paris Accord. How can we do anything if the United States can't get its pollution under control?” He said the U.S. had made significant progress on climate, and while it felt like a moment to, I don’t know, note the job growth from the administration’s investment in cleantech manufacturing (in predominantly red states), Biden instead cited the formation of the Climate Corps, a nice but thus-far modest fellowship program that puts young Americans to work fighting the climate crisis. Most of the public likely hasn’t heard of it, and Biden has been mostly quiet about it of late.
The exchange ended when Biden said, “We're moving in directions that are going to significantly change the elemental cause of pollution. But the idea that [Trump] claims that he has the biggest heart up here and is really concerned about pollution, and about climate, I've not seen any indication of that.”
And just like that, it was onto prescription drugs, who is better at golf, and Trump’s weight. You know, the usual debate stuff.
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The Esmeralda 7 project is another sign that Trump’s solar freeze is over.
The Esmeralda 7 solar project, a collection of proposed solar farms and batteries that would encompass tens of thousands of acres of federal public lands in western Nevada, appears to be moving towards the end of its federal permitting process.
The farms developed by NextEra, Invenergy, Arevia, ConnectGen, and others together would add up to 6,200 megawatts of solar generation capacity, making it the largest solar project in already solar-rich Nevada.
To get a sense of the massive scale of the project, the two newly installed nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia are about 1,000 megawatts each and the Empire Wind offshore wind project that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum ordered a halt to this week had a planned capacity of just over 800 megawatts.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management updated its website for the project, indicating that the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project would be published on April 25 and the record of decision would be published on July 18.
A Bureau of Land Management spokesperson told me that the Bureau wouldn’t have anything new to share until the publication of the final environmental impact statement “in the coming days or week or so.”
Still, the fact that the BLM is making progress on a decision at all is yet another sign that the “freeze” on renewables projects put in place in the early days of the Trump administration has begun to thaw, at least for solar and transmission projects.
The new decision date is also consistent with the freeze being over. A timeline presented at a BLM meeting in September envisioned the final Environmental Impact Statement being issued sometime between the fall of last year and spring of this year, with a record of decision in April. The listed July date would roughly match with the project’s permitting being delayed by two months.
The 60-day renewable permitting pause was one of Trump’s first actions in office and the offshore wind industry especially has continued to bear the brunt of the administration’s anti-renewable wrath.
But solar and transmission appear to be a different story: a Bureau of Land Management spokesperson told Heatmap in March that “there is currently no freeze on processing renewable applications for solar” or for “making authorization decisions.” Earlier that month, BLM had approved a transmission line for a solar project in Southern California saying that the project would “Unleash American Energy.”
Like many large scale Nevada solar projects, the Esmeralda 7 has attracted some opposition from some area residents and conservation groups. The transmission line necessary for the project, Greenlink West, was approved in September.
For the first time, his administration targets an offshore wind project already under construction.
The Trump administration will try to stop work on Empire Wind, an offshore wind project by Equinor south of Long Island that was going through active construction, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted to X on Wednesday.
Burgum announced that he directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to “halt all construction activities on the Empire Wind Project until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
A memo to the agency, which was obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, references “revelations” of “serious deficiencies” in the approval process for Empire Wind. The reported memo does not provide any further description or evidence to back this claim. When we requested comment on the Free Beacon story, an Interior spokesperson simply pointed to Burgum’s short announcement.
Equinor provided a statement to Heatmap confirming after Burgum’s announcement that it “just received a notification from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) regarding our Empire Wind 1 project, which has been in construction since 2024.”
“We will engage directly with BOEM and the Department of Interior to understand the questions raised about the permits we have received from authorities,” Equinor spokesman David Schoetz said. “We will not comment about the potential consequences until we know more.”
This is the second fully permitted offshore wind project that the Trump administration has publicly targeted and attempted to stop.
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency pulled a Clean Air Act permit for Atlantic Shores, a wind farm under development off the coast of New Jersey, after anti-wind groups petitioned the agency to do so. The agency did not attempt to justify its decision other than to say that it gives the agency “the opportunity to reevaluate the Project and its environmental impacts in light of” Trump’s executive order requesting an assessment of the government’s leasing and permitting practices for wind projects.
A few days later, we were first to report that Representative Chris Smith — one of the loudest anti-wind voices in Congress — asked Burgum to halt work on Empire Wind, asserting that the environmental review process for the project was “completely inadequate.”
If Empire Wind is indeed halted, it would be the first offshore wind project under construction to be stopped by the Trump administration. Equinor disclosed in a project update that it started subsea rock installation last month, although the company’s statement to Heatmap indicates construction may have begun as early as last year. A halt to work on Empire Wind would cast a shadow over other offshore wind projects under construction, including Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia project, which we scooped could also wind up in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
Stopping Empire Wind would also mean a huge blow to New York State’s climate and clean energy goals.
After the state’s Indian Point nuclear plant closed in 2021, the population-dense metro area in and around New York City has mostly replaced that carbon-free source of energy with natural gas. Offshore wind was supposed to be a path to moving away from reliance on the fossil fuel. The state’s target of deploying 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 was already going to be nearly impossible due to Trump’s pause on new leases and permits. Without the 800 megawatt Empire Wind project, New York will only have 1 gigawatt in the pipeline.
This news has already sparked an aggressive response from the American Clean Power Association, the largest renewables trade association, which released a statement pleading for the administration to “quickly address perceived inadequacies in the prior permit approvals” and that “halting construction of fully permitted energy projects is the literal opposite of an energy abundance agenda.”
“With skyrocketing energy demand and increasing consumer prices, we need streamlined permitting for all domestic energy resources,” American Clean Power CEO Jason Grumet stated. “Doubling back to reconsider permits after projects are under construction sends a chilling signal to all energy investment.”
“NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions.”
A group of Republican lawmakers were hoping a new report released Monday would give them fresh ammunition in their fight against offshore wind development. Instead, they got … pretty much nothing. But they’re milking it anyway.
The report in question originated with a spate of whale deaths in early 2023. Though the deaths had no known connection to the nascent industry, they fueled a GOP campaign to shut down the renewable energy revolution that was taking place up and down the East Coast. New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith joined with three of his colleagues to solicit the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into the impacts of offshore wind on the environment, maritime safety, military operations, commercial fishing, and other concerns.
The resulting document is more of an overview than an investigation, and its findings are far from the smoking gun Republicans were looking for. Its main message is that the government and developers should do a better job engaging with Tribes and the fishing industry. As for whales, it basically shrugs. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions and has not recorded marine mammal deaths from offshore wind activities,” it says.
But Smith seized on other findings to declare that the report “gives credibility and vindication” to concerns he has raised about offshore wind, pointing specifically to a section about defense and radar systems. The steel in offshore wind turbines has “high electromagnetic reflectivity,” which can disrupt certain radar systems, the report says. In a short paragraph about strategies to mitigate the issue, it notes that the Department of Defense can request that certain areas be excluded from development — which it has already done — or curtail operations as needed.
Smith also highlighted a portion of the report that says “large shipping vessels may have trouble avoiding turbines in the event of a mechanical failure.” Most projects on the East Coast have proposed spacing turbines at least 1 nautical mile apart, but shipping vessels may need up to 2 nautical miles in the event they need to make a sharp turn. The report doesn’t make any specific recommendations, but notes that the BOEM can prohibit construction within a certain distance of shipping lanes and require developers to create a “lighting, marking, and signaling plan” to improve safety.
Smith recently joined anti-offshore wind activists calling on the government to halt work on Empire Wind 1, an offshore wind farm off the coast of New York and New Jersey developed by Equinor that started construction this month. In a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, he wrote that the environmental review process under the Biden administration “was completely inadequate,” and that the Empire Wind project could thus be “catastrophic.”
The GAO report finds little fault in the previous administration’s environmental review process. It does, however, identify “gaps in Interior’s oversight of development.” For example, the BOEM has been inconsistent in the way it consults with Tribes to identify areas for wind development, as well as in how it considers or addresses the concerns Tribes raise. Part of the problem, per the report, is that Tribes have limited capacity to review documents and engage with the agency, and that government grants meant to address this gap are inaccessible because they require the Tribes to cover some of the costs. The report also finds that while the agency has taken steps to incorporate the fishing industry’s concerns into developing new lease areas, it hasn’t adequately communicated those steps to the industry. In addition, while the agency has called for a compensation mechanism to reimburse fishing companies for losses related to offshore wind, it has not yet established one.
The five recommendations the GAO makes in light of its findings are all related to boosting agency capacity for engagement and information sharing. Far from building up the office, however, the Trump administration has laid off more than 2,000 interior department employees, including eight of the roughly 80 staffers who worked on planning and permitting offshore wind.
Smith is taking the report’s findings — including a note that there are still unknowns about offshore wind’s impacts — as proof that development should be shut down. “Ocean wind energy development is an egregiously flawed and dangerous initiative and must be stopped,” he said in a press release Monday.