The Trump administration brought a major blow to the American offshore wind industry yesterday by ordering a large wind project off the coast of New York to stop construction.
The American interior secretary, Doug Burgum, announced this decision on X, which ordered a stop on all the constructions on the Empire Wind project pending “a more in -depth examination of the information which suggests that the Biden administration has rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis”.
President Donald Trump painted the offshore wind as an environmental coge from the campaign track, wrongly connecting projects offered to the deaths of whales without proof while promising to “unravel, baby, forest” for oil and gas at the same time. Now, his administration is trying to prevent offshore wind farms from being built, even those who have already obtained federal approvals.
President Donald Trump painted the wind offshore as an environmental bod
Trump published a decree on the first day in power that has stopped renting and allowing new offshore wind projects. Empire Wind, however, has a federal lease since 2017 and has already had state and federal permits in place.
Equinor, the Norwegian company developing the project, confirmed in a press release today that it had suspended the construction to comply with an opinion he received from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “Empire engages with the relevant authorities to clarify this question and envisages its legal appeals, including the appeal of order,” said the press release.
The construction of Empire Wind, which, according to Equinor, had a gross accounting value of around 2.5 billion dollars, began this month and was to finish in 2027. Once finished, it was supposed to produce enough electricity without carbon pollution for 500,000 houses in New York. The construction used 1,500 people, according to Equinor. The project included an Oshore association center at South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which was to create around 1,000 union construction jobs.
“The end of the work on the fully authorized Empire 1 Offshore project project should send chills in all the industries that invest and have contracts with the United States government,” said Liz Burdock, president and chief executive officer of the Offshore Energy Trade Oceantic Network in a statement sent by email. “Having to prevent an authorized and funded energy project from going forward sends a strong and clear message to all companies – beyond those of the offshore wind industry – that their investment in the United States is not sure.”
The United States is far behind Europe and China to deploy an offshore wind, even if it has more potential than many other nations to exploit the resource of its vast coasts. The offshore wind could meet up to a quarter of the country’s power needs by 2050, and it can be well associated with eager energy data centers that push energy demand in the United States.
But in addition to the financial misfortunes caused by the tangled supply chains and the increase in project costs, the offshore wind has faced strong opposition from the commercial fishing industry and residents concerned about turbines affecting the opinions of the ocean. A failure of the turbine off the Massachusetts which led a blade to break and hunt in the ocean of fomented fears concerning the potential environmental impact of wind farms, although necropsies indicate the strikes of ships and fishing equipment such as the main causes of whale death.
“Stopping work on the Offshore Empire Wind 1 project entirely authorized by the federal government should send chills in all the industries that invest and have contracts with the US government.”
“This is the industrialization of our ocean, faced by federal agencies and delivered by a foreign company on condition of climate action,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the long Island Commercial Association, in an opinion published in the New York Post Last week.
Joe Biden had set the goal of increasing the United States’s wind capacity from 42 to 30,000 megawatts by 2030. Since the winds are generally stronger on the ocean than on earth, offshore turbines were considered an abundant source of renewable energy which would help the United States eliminate pollution from power plants and fight climate change. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has promised to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the Wind Empire “at every stage” in a statement published yesterday.
“If Trump had an ounce of compassion or to take care of the American people, he would strengthen renewable energy projects as an empire that created stable jobs, allowed families to breathe more easily and to save more on electricity,” said the deputy legislative director of the Sierra Club for clean energy and Xavier Boatright electrification, in a statement sent by electronic mail. “Instead, Trump once again prioritizes the interests of the big fossil fuels and charges the price of the Americans.”
Petroleum and gas interests spent more than $ 75 million in campaign donations to eliminate Trump last year. In January, Trump said that “no new windmills” would be built while he was in power, saying they “throw” the United States as “garbage in a field”.
