Citing President Trump’s executive order restricting offshore wind and a defective permitting process implemented by the Biden administration, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issued an order on April 16 for the developers of the Empire offshore wind project to immediately stop construction.
The Biden administration fast-tracked Empire’s approval late last year to build 147 wind turbines on 79,000 acres of ocean floor 20 miles off the coast of Long Island, New York. The Empire project, like all of the other East Coast offshore wind projects, was hustled through the permitting and regulatory process by the Biden administration in an attempt to potentially foil any later reversal that may be pursued by an incoming Trump administration.
Last week, Bonnie Brady, the Executive Director of the Long Island Commercial Fisheries Association, wrote an op-ed summarizing all the egregious harm which the Empire project would impose not only on the fishing industry, but also on the marine environment, the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, the citizens of Long Island, and New York electricity ratepayers. Her observation that Empire Wind “is not about progress, but about the industrialization of our oceans” perfectly captured the project’s deceit. “It is corporate welfare disguised as environmentalism,” she noted.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, which is being built by Dominion Energy off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, is the largest boondoggle project of all, and it is subject to all of the same concerns about offshore wind that Secretary Burgum and Ms. Brady mentioned.
This project is far bigger than Empire, and although Dominion Energy says it is halfway done, 90 of the 180 monopiles still need to be constructed, no wind turbines have been erected, and the cabling is not yet finished. It will be two more years before any electricity is generated.
Like Empire, the permitting process which enabled CVOW was muscled through the various federal agencies by the Biden administration with scant recognition of serious drawbacks to both the environment and national security.
For example, Virginia Wind lies smack in the middle of the largest naval and aviation military complex in the country. Military sources we have talked to, who for obvious reasons do not wish to be named, have told us that many officials in the Department of Defense have serious reservations about the radar interference which the 800′ towers will create for military sonar and radar operations. Indeed, a GAO report released on April 10th seems to confirm these worries, it states: “Wind turbines can reduce the performance of radar systems used for defense and maritime navigation and safety in several ways. These include reducing detection sensitivity, obscuring potential targets, and generating false targets….” Not surprisingly, such reservations were buried by the Biden administration in its zeal to promote offshore wind, regardless of the cost to military preparedness.
Maritime safety is also a major concern. Hampton Roads is one of the busiest shipping corridors on the East Coast. Like the military, Coast Guard personnel bent a knee to the Biden administration and accepted this threat to its search and rescue capability rather than risk career suicide.
Additionally, there is the matter of consumer protection. It is clear why Dominion Energy is continuing with the project. With CVOW, Dominion shareholders will receive (by my calculations) $600 million annually in assured monopoly profits from an overbuilt, bloated asset base that generates a negligible amount of additional electricity for the grid.
Lastly, the Fish and Wildlife Service used remarkable deception to approve nearly guaranteed North Atlantic Right Whale deaths. They calculated the risk from each East Coast offshore wind project separately rather than measuring the total harm to the Right Whale from all of the projects. They then casually concluded that this erroneous study demonstrated that the risk to the whales is low.
In summary, Virginia’s offshore wind project shares many of the same flaws as the Empire wind project, including its rushed and subpar permitting procedure, environmental responsibilities, and ratepayer deceit.
If Secretary Burgum is serious about enforcing the Trump administration’s policy to restrain offshore wind, and to require adequate analysis and consultation before any approvals, there is every reason why he should treat Virginia Wind – and every other ongoing offshore wind project- exactly like Empire Wind.
This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy