Yet another Biden legacy project appears to be in danger of being shut down.
A wind farm off the shore of Long Island could have the plug pulled after a Trump administration review was ordered. The project is now losing a reported $50 million per week while it is in this holding pattern.
One of Joe Biden’s biggest “accomplishments” was locking down deals on rather large wind farm projects off our coast.
During his last year in office, Biden signed several deals, including one that was tagged as the country’s eighth-largest offshore wind project.
Ken Kimmell, Avangrid’s chief development officer, the company that was running the project, stated, “It’s a lot of energy to be added to the grid, which we desperately need. We need clean energy and new capacity to replace coal and nuclear plants that are retiring.
“These wind farms are of such size and scale that they offer the region clean energy and a pathway to keep the lights on.”
After Trump took office, it did not take long for Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to start blocking some of these projects, with the Empire Wind 1 project being one of the first to get cut.
Burgum stated that the project had been “rushed through” and that they did not conduct “sufficient analysis” before moving forward.
Trump has never really liked wind projects, calling them “big, ugly windmills,” adding, "We're not going to do the wind thing.”
I have always found wind projects to be interesting when you consider how much steel has to be milled, and lubricants for operation and winterization, as well as the installation process. At any point, does that energy actually offset the carbon footprint it takes to create, run, and maintain a wind farm?
Yet another project of Biden’s is now in danger as well, that being one run by Norwegian-based Equinor.
The Trump administration halted construction on the project, which is now, according to officials, losing $50 million a day. At the time, Burgum stated, “Staff of the Department of the Interior has obtained information that raises serious issues with respect to the project approvals for the Empire Wind Project. This halt is to remain in effect until further review is completed to address these serious deficiencies.”
Molly Morris, Equinor’s president of Renewables in America, stated, “We will have to terminate the program within days if we don’t have a resolution with the federal government. This situation is unsustainable.”
If I am being honest, this was likely the plan by the administration all along. Rather than pull the plug, order the review until the company is burning money, then let them pull the plug to be the bad guy. Any way you slice it, this is exactly what Trump wanted to accomplish.
