The Offshore Wind Industry Thrived under Biden. Trump Plans to Pull the Plug
National Review
David Zimmerman
President-elect Donald Trump thinks offshore wind farms are ugly, expensive, and inefficient — and he’s going to begin working to kill the industry on Day One of his presidency.
“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said during a May campaign event in Wildwood, N.J. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”
It’s not yet clear exactly how Trump plans to throttle a deeply entrenched, infrastructure-heavy industry that expanded its footprint significantly during the friendly Biden years, but energy industry experts are confident that he can, at the very least, prevent the construction of new projects. They’re less confident in his ability to shut down many sites that popped up or expanded with Biden administration support.
Assuming that Trump’s pick to lead the Department of the Interior, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, is confirmed by the Senate, he will likely face pressure to end the leases of offshore wind projects and be given the authority to prioritize oil and gas leasing instead. The next administration’s expected focus on oil and gas production would fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill.”
Trump has a suite of executive tools at his disposal, but he could also push the new GOP-controlled Congress to reduce or outright eliminate tax credits used to fund offshore wind projects.
While Trump can certainly present fiscally minded legislators with data showing that offshore wind represents a bad investment for taxpayers, his campaign rhetoric suggests he’s more attracted to the visceral argument that offshore wind farms are actively harmful to the environment.
Speaking to podcaster Joe Rogan ahead of the election for an episode that drew tens of millions of listens, Trump likened offshore wind sites to “bird cemeter[ies]” and suggested that whales are driven “crazy” because of the vibrations and noises from windmills.
“I wanna be a whale psychiatrist,” Trump told Rogan. “It drives the whales fricking crazy. And something happens with them, but for whatever reason, they’re getting washed up onshore, and you know, they’re ignored by these environmentalists. But they don’t talk about it.”
It may sound like standard Trumpian bluster, but the president-elect was advancing an argument that has taken center stage in a number of legal venues around the country as opponents of wind energy are fighting back against the industry’s expansion.
One major front in the battle against offshore wind is the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind site, a $9.8 billion facility operated by Dominion Energy. The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) accuse Dominion of harming the endangered North Atlantic right whale by constructing a wind farm close to its migration path and habitat along the Atlantic coast, where 29 other projects will also be located.
