On Jan. 20, President Trump ordered a pause in federal leasing and permitting of offshore wind plants. In mid-April, he halted construction of the Empire Wind installation off the coast of Long Island, a relief to many in the local fishing and hospitality industries. He also ordered a leasing and permitting review of all 11 offshore wind projects approved during the Biden years.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said that Empire Wind’s approval “was rushed through by the prior administration without sufficient analysis or consultation among the relevant agencies as relates to the potential effects from the project.”
There was a lot of that going around. Offshore wind was a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s mad dash for “clean energy” and “net-zero” emissions. The administration acted as though it had this one shot — a limited window in which to throw up as many wind installations as it could. As it turns out, that was true enough. But in the meantime, there were toes to step on and corners to cut.
Just up the coast from Empire Wind is the South Fork Wind installation off Rhode Island. The Biden Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) folks didn’t exactly endear themselves to the locals. Protect the Public’s Trust obtained a letter sent to BOEM in November 2022 by a coalition of local townships, Indian tribes, historic preservation groups and others. “We have NEVER seen a more dysfunctional process,” it said.
As part of the permitting process, the Interior Department is required to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act, to assess the effects of federal projects on historic properties, including those of cultural significance to Native Americans. Ocean Energy Management officials told attorneys for the locals they “don’t have time to comply with National Historic Preservation Act.” An appeal to the federal advisory council tasked with oversight of compliance with that act got them nowhere. As the letter to BOEM said, the “permitting review has become a theater of the absurd.”
Biden’s Ocean Energy Management team even managed to anger the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a sister federal agency charged with assessing the significant impacts of offshore construction on sea life and habitat. The Fisheries Service complained that it had been given a construction and operation plan for a major wind project just four days before construction was scheduled to begin, calling it “an unreasonable timeline for review and comment.” But the Ocean Energy Management team was in a hurry and wasn’t about to let such niceties as allowing its federal colleagues time to do their jobs stand in the way.
A little further north, a few miles off Nantucket, the Vineyard Wind installation was getting an assist from Ocean Energy Management. Like other energy producers granted a lease by the federal government, Vineyard was required to “provide financial assurance for decommissioning costs before the installation of facilities on their lease” — a safeguard against taxpayers being left with the liability of closing down or remediating a lease site.
Vineyard Wind “requested to defer providing the full amount of its decommissioning financial assurance until year 15 of actual operations under its 20-year Power Purchase Agreements,” according to documents Protect the Public’s Trust obtained through FOIA. Ocean Energy Management obliged.
The Biden Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s reasoning for granting the deferral was that financial assurance was “unnecessarily burdensome for lessees because, at that point, they have not begun receiving project income,” that the project used “proven wind turbine technology,” and because of “guaranteed electricity sales prices that, coupled with the consistent supply of wind energy, ensure a predictable income over the life of the Project.”
Nantucket residents must have found those reasons a comfort when they learned of development companies backing out of wind leases elsewhere because the economic benefits weren’t there. And when dangerous debris from a defective Vineyard turbine forced them to close beaches and the entire installation sat dormant for six months of 2024.
Ironically, at the same time the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management was granting wind projects exemptions from financial assurance requirements, it was also changing these rules for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in ways destined to drive small, independent producers from the market. They were picking winners and losers in the energy industry.
Now we learn that it wasn’t just Vineyard Wind that was winning. In late spring 2024, the administration finalized rules to expand the project’s sweetheart deal to all offshore wind installations. It was just a few weeks later that one of Vineyard Wind’s turbine blades failed.
The Biden administration let little – certainly not rules, traditions, or norms – stand in the way of its climate frenzy. After only a few months on the job, Secretary Burgum is learning just how far his predecessors were willing to push to get what they wanted.
Michael Chamberlain is Director of Protect the Public’s Trust.
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