Trump Pushes All-Out Effort to Kill Offshore Wind, While McKee Asks for a Meeting
GoLocalProv News Team
Trump Pushes All-Out Effort to Kill Offshore Wind, While McKee Asks for a Meeting
In the past two weeks, the Trump administration has dismembered the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island.
First, on August 22, the Trump administration halted the construction of Rhode Island’s largest wind project.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTØrsted’s subsidiary Revolution Wind LLC, a 50/50 joint venture with Global Infrastructure Partner’s Skyborn Renewables, received an order instructing the project to stop activities on the outer continental shelf related to the Revolution Wind project from the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
Ørsted says the multi-billion-dollar project is nearly 80% completed — the company is owned in part by the Danish government.
The Trump move was the same day that California Governor Gavin Newsom and Danish officials held a press conference, to announce a new partnership focused on climate action and technology. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed in San Francisco with Denmark's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, and the Danish Ambassador to the U.S., Jesper Møller Sørensen. Some have told GoLocal that the California event infuriated White House officials.
The following Friday, Trump’s U.S. Department of Transportation stripped a previously awarded grant of more than $11 million to Rhode Island to support the wind industry.
But the work stoppage order and the grant cancellation may be just some of the strategies being used by the Trump administration.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that “The White House has taken the extraordinary step of instructing a half-dozen agencies to draft plans to thwart the country’s offshore wind industry as it intensifies its government-wide attack on a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive, and inefficient. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser, are leading the effort, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.”
Further, the Times reports that other administration Departments, including Health and Human Services, headed by Robert F. Kennedy, are getting involved.
In June, Kennedy is quoted as saying he believes offshore wind is harmful to ocean life, costly for consumers, and poorly regulated. He has called for aggressive federal reviews and a reassessment of such projects due to their claimed environmental and economic drawbacks.
“Mr. Kennedy’s dislike for offshore wind power dates to his crusade against Cape Wind, a proposed 130-turbine project off Cape Cod. The Kennedys, one of the country’s most powerful political families, fought the project from its inception in 2001 to its collapse in 2017, saying it threatened the views from their Cape Cod estate. (The family’s neighbor, the billionaire industrialist William I. Koch, also spent roughly $5 million fighting the project,” reported the Times.
Other federal agencies are being enlisted in the effort to kill the offshore wind industry, including the EPA, Interior, and Commerce Departments.
While Trump Is Dismantling the Offshore Wind Industry, McKee Wants to Meet
On Wednesday, in a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, McKee wrote in part, “I would also like to reiterate my request for an in-person meeting with President Trump. I look forward to continuing to underscore the urgent consequences of this stop-work order for Rhode Island, the region’s economy, and its working families.”
McKee has also held a rally in opposition to Trump's policy, and he and other East Coast governors issued a statement directed at the President over the weekend.