The US Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum announced that offshore wind has no further place during the Trump administration by saying that the technology is too costly and unreliable. In one of his speeches at the Gastech event in Milan, Burgum stated that five offshore wind projects that are under construction are being reviewed by the government, but the administration is focused on innovation rather than regulation.
Administration declares wind moratorium
US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a press conference on 10 September that offshore wind has no future in the US under the Trump administration and that the government was reviewing five offshore wind projects that are now under construction, according to Offshore Wind. Speaking to the press at the Gastech event in Milan, Italy, Burgum said offshore wind was “too expensive and not reliable enough.”
“Many of those projects weren’t really about electricity; they were about tax subsidies,” said Doug Burgum. “I think the fact that the subsidies have been either cut back or limited means that, likely, there will not be future offshore wind built in America,” Burgum added that there is also opposition to offshore wind due to concerns about the whale population, as well as concerns from the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about interference with radar systems.
Projects under federal review
“A lot of these offshore wind projects were moved [through] a very fast, ideologically driven permitting process. We’ve been asked as part of an executive order from the president to take a whole-of-government approach to review those,” the US Interior Secretary said. The US government is currently “taking a deep look” into five offshore wind projects that are under construction, Burgum said, without naming the projects.
The latest project that got a stop-work order from the Department of the Interior (DOI) is Revolution Wind, an almost completed offshore wind farm owned by a 50/50 joint venture between Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables. Earlier this year, this happened to Equinor’s Empire Wind 1. Currently in the construction phase are also Vineyard Wind 1, owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Avangrid, Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW), owned by the US company Dominion Energy.
States maintain renewable commitments
As President Donald Trump wages an all-out assault on offshore wind projects, state leaders face a dilemma: Do they pull the plug on offshore wind and look for other ways to meet their fast-growing energy needs? Or do they double down on their investments, in hopes of helping the industry rebound after Trump leaves office? According to the Union Bulletin.
Many states along the East Coast have been counting on offshore wind to provide a large portion of their electricity needs in the decades ahead. They’ve invested billions of dollars in growing the industry and getting projects off the ground. But offshore wind has a particular vulnerability: The federal government is the landlord.
Nuclear remains a priority
“This is one of the few areas where states are not in full control of their own energy destiny,” said New York state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat. “This administration is always looking for leverage points to try to squeeze, and this is a vulnerable one for us.” State leaders are not yet backing away from their commitments to offshore wind, saying it still has massive long-term potential.
As the Trump administration has successfully stalled the offshore wind development process, the officials of the energy authorities point out that nuclear power growth will continue to remain one of the keystones to their strategy. The offshore wind is only a guise to ideology and not technological restrictions because the states are still making investments in renewable infrastructure in the hope of reforms in diffusion in the future.