The offshore wind industry is floundering as President Donald Trump reverses Biden-era policies designed to boost the industrialization of America’s oceans.
While President Joe Biden pushed for an enormous expansion of offshore wind energy during his time in the White House, many of the projects his administration supported with subsidies and favorable regulation have since collapsed or been abandoned by developers due to unfavorable economic conditions and the Trump administration’s crackdown on incentives for the green energy technology.
“The windmills are killing our country by the way,” Trump said on June 12. “We’re not going to approve windmills unless something happens that’s an emergency. … I guess it could happen, but we’re not doing any of them.” (RELATED: Massive Offshore Wind Boondoggle Dead In Water)
Trump moved to temporarily withdraw all offshore wind leasing on the Continental Shelf and ordered a review of all permits for wind leasing on his first day back in the Oval Office.
About a dozen East Coast offshore wind projects envisioned during Biden’s tenure have since been paused, according to E&E News. Among these include the recently-axed development off the coast of New Jersey, as well as a review of a huge project along th Massachusetts coast.
“We’ve seen a chilling effect across the industry from the administration’s stance on offshore wind, and subsequent damaging executive orders,” Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition, told E&E News.
Shell, which dropped out of the New Jersey project in January after initially pledging to invest nearly $1 billion in the development, reportedly told E&E News that it “will not lead new offshore wind developments.”
Despite Trump’s moves to block offshore wind expansion, many Democrat officials still support the technology. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul kept her state’s massive offshore wind project alive in May, reportedly in exchange for working with the Trump administration to advance fossil fuel pipelines in the state, though Hochul’s office previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they made no official deal.
In recent years, opposition to offshore wind farms surged due to concerns about high-voltage cables being routed through residential neighborhoods and reports of dead whales and dolphins washing up along the East Coast, which some observers suspect is linked to ocean industrialization. Additionally, wind turbines off the coast of New England have malfunctioned and shed debris into the ocean, prompting environmentalists to voice concerns about marine life.
Fishermen have also spoken out against these projects, arguing that their industry and livelihoods are endangered by offshore wind farms.
Shell and the Southeastern Wind Coalition did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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