#offshore wind power

[rjzimmerman]

Judge Halts Trump Actions Aimed at Throttling Renewable Energy. (New York Times)

Excerpt:

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a series of decisions that wind and solar developers say have throttled hundreds of renewable energy projects across the country.

Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy developers filed against the Interior Department in December. The developers argued that the Trump administration was unlawfully discriminating against wind and solar power, impeding projects on public and private land.

In her ruling, Judge Casper, an Obama appointee, said the developers were likely to prevail on the merits and ordered the Interior Department to stop implementing a series of memos, issued last year, that subjected renewable power to intensified reviews and new restrictions.

The coalition that filed the lawsuit — including RENEW Northeast, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, the Southern Renewable Energy Association and Interwest Energy Alliance — applauded the ruling. “Our coalition has demanded and received an immediate halt to the Trump administration’s unlawful permitting actions, which have discriminatorily placed wind and solar technologies into second-class status,” the coalition said in a statement.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration will try to appeal the ruling. The White House referred questions to the Interior Department, which said that it does not comment on litigation.

The ruling marked the latest legal setback for the Trump administration in its efforts to thwart wind and solar power. In five different cases this year, federal judges have struck down efforts by the Interior Department to halt construction of wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean.

President Trump has largely scorned wind and solar power, seeking instead to promote fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal. The latest case centers on a series of Interior Department actions that greatly slowed or restricted federal approvals for wind and solar projects.

In July, the agency issued a memo saying that a wide array of federal decisions and consultations on wind and solar projects that are typically carried out by career employees would be subject to new layers of review by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s office. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also issued new restrictions for renewable energy projects.

[mindblowingscience]

Dutch open 'world's largest offshore' wind farm

Gemini will contribute about 13 percent of the country's total renewable energy supply, and about 25 percent of its wind power, he added.

Dutch officials on Monday opened what is being billed as one of the world's largest offshore wind farms, with 150 turbines spinning in action far out in the North Sea.

Over the next 15 years, the Gemini windpark, which lies some 85 kilometres (53 miles) off the northern coast of The Netherlands, will meet the energy needs of about 1.5 million people.

At full winds the windpark has a generating capacity of some 600 megawatts, and will help supply some 785,000 Dutch households with renewable energy, the company said.

"We are now officially in the operational stage," the company's managing director Matthias Haag told AFP, celebrating the completion of a project first conceived in 2010.

Continue Reading.

[rjzimmerman]

Vineyard Wind, country's first large-scale offshore wind project, finishes construction

After years of starts and stops, construction on Vineyard Wind, the country's first large-scale offshore wind project, wrapped up this week.

Excerpt from this story from WBUR:

After years of starts and stops, workers installed the final blades on the last turbine Friday evening to complete Vineyard Wind, the country's first large-scale offshore wind project.

It will be at least several weeks until all 62 turbines in the wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts are fully up and running, generating power for the New England grid. Still, the end of construction is a milestone for the project and the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has faced years of economic and political headwinds.

Gov. Maura Healey said she was "thrilled" to learn construction was complete, noting that the project is expected to save Massachusetts ratepayers $1.4 billion over the first 20 years of operation.

"The affordable, homegrown power it delivers to Massachusetts residents and businesses will bring costs down as President Trump throws global markets into disarray," she said in a statement.

As the first large offshore wind project to go through the cumbersome federal permitting process, all eyes have been on Vineyard Wind from the beginning. Whether it would reach this point was not a sure bet.

[rjzimmerman]

Trump Administration Will Pay More Energy Firms to Cancel Wind Farms. (New York Times)

Excerpt:

The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said Monday, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month.

The firms will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and the other off California. The government will reimburse the companies a combined $885 million, the amount they paid for the leases under the Biden administration.

In exchange, the companies have pledged to invest that money in oil and gas projects, including liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast.

The deals are modeled after a similar agreement last month with the French energy giant TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies forfeited its leases for two wind projects planned off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, while committing to a range of fossil-fuel investments.

The agreements are extraordinary transfers of taxpayer dollars to private companies for the purposes of throttling offshore wind power, a source of clean energy that Mr. Trump has disparaged for decades. The president has claimed falsely that offshore wind turbines do not work and that they are killing whales.

The administration has pursued a shifting strategy for stifling the country’s nascent offshore wind industry. In December, Interior ordered a halt to construction of five wind farms off the East Coast, but federal judges have struck down those moves. By dealing directly with developers, the administration may be able to avoid legal challenges.

The first new agreement affects Bluepoint Wind, a wind farm in the early stages of development off New York and New Jersey. The project was proposed by Global Infrastructure Partners, a part of asset manager BlackRock, and Ocean Winds, which is itself a joint venture between Engie and EDP Renewables, two European clean-energy firms.

The second deal would cancel Golden State Wind, another early-stage venture off California’s central coast. Golden State Wind is a 50-50 partnership between the developers Ocean Winds and Reventus Power.

Both Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind agreed not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States, although that pledge would not necessarily apply to the companies behind the ventures.

[rjzimmerman]

Trump Administration to Pay German Firm $1.2 Billion to Cancel Wind Leases. (New York Times)

Excerpt:

The Trump administration will pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana, the company announced on Thursday.

It was the fifth such deal the government has reached this year to halt the development of offshore wind, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has derided for decades.

Under the agreement, RWE will voluntarily surrender three leases it owned for wind farms in federal waters. Those projects were in the early stages of development and had little chance of moving forward under the Trump administration, which has halted all federal permitting for offshore wind.

The government would reimburse RWE roughly what the company had paid for the leases under the Biden administration. The settlement would also resolve any legal disputes over the leases, the company said. The company will invest about the same amount in new natural gas projects in the United States, it said.

“After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the U.S. for the foreseeable future,” RWE said in a statement, referring to the offshore wind leases. “The company determined that this resolution best serves the interests of its stakeholders and allows it to direct resources toward energy projects that can be advanced with certainty.”

The firm will spend $900 million to acquire an indirect 16 percent stake in a liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana and sign a $300 million order for new gas turbines that generate electricity. The company said it was planning to build at least 15 natural gas peaking plants in the United States.

The agreement is similar to deals that the Trump administration has struck since March with other energy developers, including TotalEnergies and Invenergy, to refund wind leases off California, Maine, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina in exchange for investing in fossil fuel projects instead.

Including Thursday’s announcement, the government has so far spent roughly $3.9 billion to get companies to terminate 12 offshore wind leases.

[rjzimmerman]

Offshore Wind Projects Challenge Trump Administration’s Order to Stop Work. (New York Times)

Excerpt:

Developers of five offshore wind farms that were ordered last week by the Trump administration to halt construction are suing to restart work on at least three of the projects.

The Interior Department on Dec. 22 ordered companies to halt work on five wind farms in various stages of construction along the East Coast. They were: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off the coast of New York; Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts; and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia.

The administration cited unspecified national security concerns about the projects.

On Thursday, Orsted, the Danish energy giant that is building Revolution Wind, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On Friday Equinor, the developer of Empire Wind, did the same.

Both companies said they are seeking preliminary injunctions that would allow construction to continue as the litigation proceeds. Orsted is also building Sunrise Wind and said it was considering a similar legal challenge to restart work on that project, too.

The action this week comes after Dominion Energy, the developer of Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, filed the first legal challenge, on Dec. 23. In its complaint in federal court in Virginia, Dominion said the administration’s actions were causing “immediate, irreparable harm” and $5 million in losses per day. The Virginia project is the largest of the five. A judge has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 9.

Avangrid, the developer of the fifth wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1 off the Massachusetts coast, has not indicated whether it plans to fight the administration. Vineyard Wind is already partly running, with about half of the project’s planned 62 turbines sending power to the electric grid.

The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.

At stake overall is about $25 billion of investment in the five wind farms. The projects were expected to create 10,000 jobs and to power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.

Revolution Wind is more than 87 percent complete, and the company has already installed all offshore foundations as well as 58 of 65 wind turbines. Empire Wind is more than 60 percent complete and is slated to deliver power to the grid in 2027.

[rjzimmerman]

The Great Lakes are ideal for wind energy. So where is it?

Bureaucratic hurdles and high costs have prevented the offshore wind industry from developing the Great Lakes’ abundant wind resources.

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

There are no wind turbines on the Great Lakes — and it isn’t for lack of wind. 

This titanic network of interconnected freshwater lakes with a surface area larger than New England, New York, and New Jersey combined is theoretically ideal for wind farms. Winds sweeping across the lakes are stronger, more consistent, and less turbulent than those over land. The National Laboratory of the Rockies has estimated that the Great Lakes states have enough offshore wind potential to generate more than three times their combined annual electricity consumption. 

Plus, unlike proposed wind farms along the East Coast, where the federal government controls the seabed, Great Lakes states have jurisdiction over their lakebeds. While projects would still face federal oversight, some proponents see wind development in the Great Lakes as a potential workaround to President Trump’s attacks on the industry.

“If it’s done correctly and we’re able to harness even a fraction of that, we could offset a lot of electricity demand,” said Melissa Scanlan, director of the Center for Water Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Still, the vast inland lakes remain untapped largely due to a lack of streamlined permitting processes at the state level and economic hurdles. Offshore wind is expensive, and unlike the East Coast, where a mature wind industry has built specialized ships and ports to build turbines in the sea, the Great Lakes states lack the infrastructure. Ultimately, renewable energy experts say the region doesn’t have the legal framework or technical capacity to support such massive projects. 

So far, offshore wind power — which involves installing turbines in large bodies of water, typically the ocean — in the United States, has been concentrated along the Eastern seaboard. Projects are still very rare: just three are currently operating, with several more under construction, all along the East Coast. 

More than a decade ago, President Barack Obama’s push for renewable energy buoyed a short-lived boom in offshore wind projects — particularly in the Great Lakes. The New York Power Authority and cities such as Toronto explored boosting their energy supply with wind power from Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. However, the initial boost only propelled one project forward: Ohio’s Icebreaker Wind in Lake Erie. After clashing with Ohio regulators over whether turbines could run through the night and battling a court case filed by local residents over impacts to bats and migratory birds, the developers eventually ran out of money and called the project off in 2023.

[rjzimmerman]

Trump destroyed offshore wind. The Northeast can’t live without it.

To keep the lights on, states like New York and Massachusetts will need to build projects that are currently “impossible.”

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Since his presidency began last year, Donald Trump has embarked on an all-out campaign to destroy the nation’s nascent offshore wind industry. He has halted all wind lease sales in federal waters, issued stop-work orders for nearly-completed wind farms, and told oil industry executives that his “goal is to not let any windmills be built.” Last month, his Interior Department said it would terminate five major wind farms that are under construction in the north Atlantic Ocean, citing vague “national security” issues. These wind farms would together generate around 5.6 gigawatts of power, enough to supply around 4 million homes.

Trump’s actions have all but destroyed the U.S. offshore wind industry, which was already facing significant economic challenges during the Biden administration. While developers behind the terminated wind farms recently secured court orders allowing them to complete construction, other potential wind installations have been scrapped, and investors are retreating from offshore projects. Even as solar energy continued to grow at a rapid clip in 2025, wind saw virtually no growth in the United States.

That’s not just bad for the climate — it will also make it harder to keep the lights on in the U.S. northeast.  The nation’s densest region is counting on dozens of new wind farms to meet rising power demand; the stretch of coastal states from Maine to Virginia have collectively committed to buy more than 45 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2040, almost ten times more than the five nearly-complete projects will provide. The region does not have many other good options for filling the gap. Without wind, residents of states like Massachusetts and New York will pay more money for dirtier fuel. The energy future of these states now hinges on whether they can tempt offshore wind developers back to a market that the federal government has just spent a year destroying.

“The market is at less than zero confidence right now,” said Kris Ohleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent organization that supports the buildout of the industry.

The situation is most acute in New England. In a report analyzing decarbonization scenarios, the energy nonprofit Clean Air Task Force found that offshore wind would have to make up almost half of all power generation by 2050 for the region to fully decarbonize. But it’s not just that these states need offshore wind to ditch fossil fuels. Experts also say that, with federal support, wind could be both the easiest-to-build and the most reliable power source for New England. That’s in part because communities across the region have mobilized against new gas pipelines and power plants. Furthermore, the region’s winter power needs will increase as more homes switch away from heating oil and begin to use electric heat pumps instead. Offshore wind turbines also fare much better in cold weather than power plants fueled by natural gas and oil.

“For all the difficulties, building [wind] and interconnecting is easier than almost anything else you would do,” said John Carlson, the senior Northeast regional policy manager at Clean Air Task Force, which co-produced the report on New England’s decarbonization. “At the end of the day, this has to happen. There isn’t another option.”