To the Editor:
In the space of a day, President Trump upended the offshore wind (OSW) gameboard with two executive orders that freeze plans for new offshore wind development, end the Green New Deal, pause funding under it, and order his new Attorney General and Secretary of the Interior to study federal wind and permitting practices.
Grassroots, nonpartisan, offshore wind opponents like Green Oceans are cautiously hopeful, while supporters despair. Lost in the tumult is one critical fact: The fight over offshore wind is not over.
There is almost as much uncertainty now as before. The “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing” order imposes a six-month pause on new OSW leases and construction; fully permitted projects that are already under construction, like Revolution, South Fork, and Vineyard Wind, can continue moving forward.
Will the new administration be inclined to defend the federal agencies that failed to follow the law during the rush to build these environmentally destructive monstrosities?
One expert, Tim Fox, of the consulting firm ClearView Energy, told S&P Global’s Platts energy newsletter, “We think the Trump administration is unlikely to vigorously defend the Biden administration’s offshore wind project approvals in court.” The new administration “could instead use those judicial proceedings to undo what was completed before Trump took office.”
In the meantime, will developers like Ørsted continue moving forward on money-losing projects in the face of implacable presidential hostility? After a recent $1.7 billion write-down in the U.S., Ørsted replaced its CEO, Mads Nipper, and is reeling from an 83 percent plummet in its share prices over the past four years.
Shell PLC has announced it is pulling out of the Atlantic Shores OSW project off New Jersey, after losing nearly $1 billion on the project. Others, faced with a president openly hostile to this bad idea, and dependent on federal money for profitability, may follow Shell’s lead.
Despite these changes, Green Oceans will continue to prosecute our two federal cases; the government failed to follow its own laws when evaluating the threats OSW represents in the Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind projects. Our suits highlight the critical mistakes in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) analyses of OSW’s threat to marine life and coastal communities.
Just one example: BOEM never considered the possibility of a blade failure in the environmental impact statements underlying Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind’s approvals. Last summer, residents from Nantucket to Montauk had beachfront seats to the havoc and environmental hazards resulting from jagged shards of fiberglass and foam washing up from the catastrophic Vineyard Wind blade failure. We learned that blades break with an alarming frequency, and watched with concern as the federal government ordered Vineyard Wind to remove 66 installed blades due to fears about their structural integrity.
Green Oceans will press forward with litigation, public advocacy, and collaboration with like-minded organizations to protect sensitive marine habitats and the species. We are strengthening our ties with other grassroots groups on the East and West Coasts.
Now is the time to stay engaged. Momentum is shifting in our favor, but it will require a dogged commitment to protecting the environment in the face of misinformation peddled by universities, OSW developers, and conflicted environmental groups.
Green Oceans won’t rest until our coastal waters are safe from environmentally destructive offshore wind development.
Sue Lemoie-Zarba and John Zarba, co-directors
Preserve MV
Sue Lemoie-Zarba and John Zarba are co-directors of Preserve MV, an affiliate of Green Oceans.
Thank you Sue and John, Your letter was very informative and well written. OSW is highly destructive to the oceans and very costly to the US taxpayers. Green Oceans has an excellent website with daily and monthly newsletters for all individuals interested in energy projects.
Keep up the good work.
Sources?
People should do a simple Google search about the background and funding sources behind ” Green Oceans “. They are far from a small grassroots organization.
Don’t believe everything you find in a quick google search, as any sixth grader should know. You may be referring to the Brown University erroneous report about Green Oceans. Professor Robert’s undergraduate sociology students failed to interview anyone involved with Green Oceans, rendering their report absurdly false. Sheer nonsense. Brown University should be embarrassed! Green Oceans has not received illicit federal or state funding, unlike questionable organizations like Sheldon Whitehouse’s wife’s Climate Conservancy, recently exposed for receiving millions in federal funding, prompting an ethics inquiry. The truth is that Green Oceans is a group of well-intentioned volunteers who donate their own time and resources in a sincere effort to stop the tragic industrialization of our ocean. If other environmental groups were actually working to protect the environment, Green Oceans wouldn’t have to step up and fill the void.
Lauren, Sue, John, and any others who oppose windmills, I urge you to reconsider.
The electricity people use has to come from somewhere. Nuclear is the new darling of the coal/fossil fuel industry.
Please, please reconsider.
Geiger counters are available for purchase inexpensively.
We cannot destroy our earth with nuclear waste.
Wind energy needs our support.
Nuclear waste lasts 10,000 years or more.
In good conscience, we cannot burden future generations with the expense and responsibility to caretake nuclear waste.
Wind turbines generate electricity efficiently and clean. It’s an ethical choice for electricity.
Solar panels on every roof is cheap and it’s also an ethical choice for electricity.
Let’s support the wind turbines.
Define efficient and clean. Usually efficiently means cost effective. Wind energy, when it works, is very expensive. Clean, these turbines use fossil fuels to operate and pollute our coastal waters with the debris from broken blades. Nuclear waste lasts 10,000 years?? How long will these football field length blades that cannot be recycled burden future generations? Is that clean? There is no cleaner and more climate friendly energy than nuclear. You don’t have to like it but it’s a fact.
An internet search for “how long does it take nuclear waste to decay to a safe level” will return links to an nrc.gov fact-sheet page that says “Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years”. We’ve had nuclear waste for 80 years now, and there’s still no plan for storing it that long. I couldn’t find the price for the temporary storage being used now, but the nrc actively regulates it, so it’s not free – and at 3% annual inflation it won’t be getting cheaper. The nrc web page also did not say whether or not the Plutonium-239 would be safe to be around by the year 26025, only that it would be half as potent as now. Seems safe to say these unknowns will have a considerable impact on the overall cost effectiveness of nuclear power. Wind certainly has downsides too – nothing is perfect – but given that whatever can go wrong will, its problems are at least shorter in duration, smaller in impact, and solvable with current off-the-shelf tech.
US wind power output has increased at about the same percent per year for the last 25years.
How can contentious conservatives put a stop to it?
Explain ethical choice please. Energy is not an ethical issue and by the way nuclear is safe
Chernobyl?
Why was Plymouth shut down?
Lower death rate per unit of energy than solar. Chernobyl was 40 years ago and design and gross mismanagement were the bad actors.
“Lower death rate per unit of energy than solar”
How many people has solar killed?
Nuclear?
Chernobyl was managed by the Russians.
The same people who invaded Ukraine.
Gross mismanagement and bad actors.
Why was Plymouth shutdown?
Safety concerns?
40 year old design?
Lauren knight you are so right, thank you Green Ocean, Nantucket (Ack for whales), and the fishermen for standing up against the industrialization of our precious marine environment, hopefully we can stop this nonsense
I see that the Times is now allowing comments on letters to the editor. Good == there have been quite a few letters to the editor that I would have liked to comment on — thank you Sam for reversing your long standing ridiculous policy. I find it interesting that a seemingly well educated and articulate person would use the word “catastrophic” to describe a broken turbine blade. Such is the power of irrational beliefs about an issue. I wonder if the author thinks that the flooding near 5 corners a few weeks ago was “catastrophic” ? There was someone paddling down the street in a kayak after all.
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