Offshore Wind’s Existential Crisis at Climate Week

 American offshore wind’s existential crisis was laid bare at this year’s Climate Week.

California and New York officials gathered on Tuesday at the New York Bar Association in Manhattan to tell attendees of the annual climate action mega-event about their efforts to hold the Trump administration to account. After Trump regulators upended wind projects off the East Coast and struck buyout trades with energy developers to ditch ocean wind leases, both states filed fresh legal action against the administration, targeting what they said were egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars that canceled once-promising projects that would’ve given gigawatts of power to grids expecting energy demand to spike.

“Every megawatt in offshore wind power is not a megawatt of fossil fuel generated power. That’s really important. That means fewer emissions that contribute to respiratory and cardiac disease,” Lem Srolovic, bureau chief of the New York attorney general’s environmental protection bureau, said at the event, as he and California attorney general Rob Bonta laid out the view that Trump’s actions against offshore wind were illegal.

The federal courts have concurred thus far, and it’s possible more judges will agree. But later in the event, Doreen Harris – CEO and President of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority – said the quiet part out loud.

“Ultimately, the challenge we have in litigation is that even if successful, we deal with realities of what a commercial entity would do in response to these risks. That remains unresolved,” Harris confessed. “How do we move to an investable future for energy infrastructure if this is the way energy infrastructure has to be advanced?”

Indeed, more litigation clearly isn’t going to help the offshore wind sector’s prospects. As we’ve reported on time and again, the Trump administration has not only used every regulatory lever imaginable – and some once unimaginable – to delay wind farms, both on and offshore. But it has gone beyond the legal, now stalling onshore wind in ways industry says stretches the boundaries of court remedy. If that’s the case on solid ground, what future could possibly exist in the U.S. for an industry that must build entirely in federal waters? And even if Trump leaves office providing for a more industry-friendly president, couldn’t a future successor undo whatever they do as well?

“There may be some hesitancy to reinvest in offshore wind in the U.S. given what has happened in the Trump administration,” Kevin Beicke, vice president of project finance at Morningstar DBRS, told me in a phone interview. This week Morningstar, a leading market analysis firm, agreed with Harris’ assessment and reaffirmed a negative outlook for the entire American offshore wind industry through at least 2028 – adding the future beyond that horizon is essentially unknown.

“It’s my view these companies would need to see some kind of substantial support for their industry if they were to try and get back into it under a future administration. And public support would be needed to support a future administration providing regulatory and financial support to the U.S. offshore wind industry.”

So this begs the question: why are states bothering with litigation they probably know won’t improve the offshore wind sector’s fortunes in the near term?

Harris told me after the event that part of the litigation is to provide a signal to the business community that they shouldn’t abandon the U.S. offshore wind industry in the future.

“Very much so. It’s a move intended not only to preserve the processes and systems that are supposed to apply but also to say, ‘We are here because we are committed to the resource, and we’re committed to the companies developing it, and they can consider a state a partner to realize those outcomes.’ That’s what we want them to understand,” she told me.

Harris’ indignation didn’t surprise me, but it was especially prescient, as New York City’s annual Climate Week chaos became embroiled in a “will they or won’t they” news cycle around Trump’s freeze on wind energy permits. During the offshore wind event, news broke in Politico that President Trump told Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright that he agreed to “green-light wind energy projects to strike [a] permitting deal” and that they’d “lift” the “blockade of renewable energy projects to get Senate Democrats moving on permitting.” The next day, at Heatmap House, Wright himself declined to speak declaratively on that report, instead signalling the issue was still a live ball. But he said a permitting deal would address concerns about “easier to build everything in America.”

Wright also suggested the administration had actively debated the de facto freeze on height clearances for wind turbines, which has essentially snagged the entire sector. “Wind has been very controversial and there have been spirited dialogues in the administration about this,” Wright told my colleague Robinson Meyer. “I do believe a successful permitting reform thing changes the playing field for anything you want to build in this country, including wind.”

When I asked Harris about the Politico report, she told me she’d rather focus on the courts. The same goes for California Energy Commission chair David Hochschild, who told me he doesn’t believe anonymous reports about a president “who also promised no new endless wars.”

“We want to make it crystal clear we’re going to fight for this and our support [for offshore wind] is going to continue,” Hochschild said. “The legal fight we’re engaged in now is necessary but not sufficient. We have a lot more work to do to build the ecosystem that’s necessary for this to come to fruition. For research and development. For permitting. For infrastructure. It’s a lot of work but we’ve done this before. All these barriers existed when we started with solar in the early days when there was skepticism.”

Offshore Wind’s Existential Crisis at Climate Week - Heatmap News