Tag Archive for: offshore wind

‘Obvious Violation Of Federal Law’: Forthcoming Litigation Could Gum Up America’s Largest-Ever Offshore Wind Farm

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  • Legal proceedings against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) could threaten to disrupt the timelines for the construction of the largest offshore wind farm in U.S. waters to date, Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project.
  • The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and The Heartland Institute requested that BOEM and the NMFS begin to revise an allegedly inadequate environmental review and associated North Atlantic Right Whale harassment authorizations within the next 60 days, or the organizations will go to court to challenge the agencies’ actions, an outcome which could possibly disrupt CVOW’s timeline.
  • “This letter officially puts BOEM on notice that CFACT is prepared to file suit in order to expose the agency’s clear violation of federal law in failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale,” Craig Rucker, CFACT’s president, said of his organization’s filing and its implications.

Pending legal challenges against the Biden administration could disrupt the timeline for construction of a Virginia offshore wind farm poised to be the largest in the U.S.

The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) filed a 60 day notice of intent to sue the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a subagency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), on Monday, citing an allegedly deficient biological review underlying the agencies’ authorizations for construction teams to legally harass a number critically-endangered North Atlantic Right Whales. The two groups request that the agencies rescind the allegedly deficient review, known as a “biological opinion,” within 60 days and issue a revised number of harassment authorizations.

If the agencies choose to disregard the request and do not rework the number of authorized whale disturbances to align with a new assessment, the organizations will take to the courts to challenge the biological opinion, according to the notice’s text. The notice and the possibility of expensive, time-consuming litigation adds to the risks that Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project faces, according to CFACT.

“This letter officially puts BOEM on notice that CFACT is prepared to file suit in order to expose the agency’s clear violation of federal law in failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale. By refusing to consider the cumulative impact of the dozens of industrial offshore wind facilities, consisting of several thousand individual turbines planned for the East Coast, it adopted a piecemeal approach, which only considered each individual offshore wind project in isolation,” Craig Rucker, CFACT’s president, said of his organization’s filing and its implications. “This is clearly a ploy to artificially reduce the total impact of these projects on the North Atlantic Right Whale. This obvious violation of federal law was ignored by the oversight agencies but will not be tolerated by the courts.”

The notice asserts that the CVOW project’s biological opinion, issued by NMFS and adopted by BOEM, runs afoul of the Endangered Species Act primarily because the assessment does not adequately consider the cumulative impacts that other East Coast offshore wind projects will have on migrating North Atlantic Right Whales that travel near the other developments in addition to CVOW, according to its text.

The Biden administration announced that it had greenlit CVOW development on Oct. 31, setting the project on course to become the largest offshore wind farm in U.S. waters. The administration’s approval followed months of speculation that the offshore wind industry is driving a massive spike in North Atlantic Right Whale deaths along the East Coast.

A considerable uptick in baleen whale deaths has coincided with the 2016 beginning of East Coast developments, a timeline which generally aligns with NOAA’s declarations of “unusual mortality events” for North Atlantic Right and Humpback Whales in 2017 and 2016, respectively, according to its website.

While critics of offshore wind have suggested that offshore wind-related sonar activity could be disorienting the whales and their sensitive hearing, which in turn makes them far more likely to transit dangerous areas or struggle to find food in ways they otherwise would not, government agencies and several major eco-activism organizations maintain that there is no available science demonstrating that there is a link between offshore wind and whale mortality. The government’s current position is that climate change and vessel strikes are primarily responsible for the increase in mortalities rather than ocean industrialization.

Offshore wind is a key aspect of the Biden administration’s overall green energy agenda, which aims to have the U.S. power sector reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2035 and net-zero for the entire U.S. economy by 2050. The administration is striving to have offshore wind generate enough power to satisfy the demand of 10 million American homes by 2030, but concerns over the industry’s ecological impact and its substantial economic struggles have put that target in jeopardy.

Representatives for BOEM and NMFS declined to comment, stating that they are unable to comment on matters of litigation. Dominion Energy and the White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin To Green Light Another Massive Offshore Wind Farm Amid Industry Troubles, Mounting Whale Deaths

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The Green Energy Industry Just Had An Absolutely Brutal Week

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The past week has been marked by worrying developments for the state of the green energy industry, suggesting that President Joe Biden’s sweeping climate agenda could be imperiled.

Offshore wind companies are cancelling projects and executives are sounding the alarm on the state of the industry, while solar companies and indexes have seen their value continue a months-long slide that has resulted in diminished earnings forecasts and a solar-oriented loan provider’s bankruptcy. These developments suggest that Biden’s sweeping green energy plans could be in trouble, especially given the intractable nature of some of the crucial economic problems plaguing the industries.

“Boosters for this energy transition bet the farm on three rent-seeking industries: wind, solar and electric vehicles. Two legs of that three-legged stool are now showing signs of financial distress despite massive subsidies they’ve already received from multiple levels of government,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults extensively on energy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “American consumers, who are paying the price for this in the form of skyrocketing costs of all forms of energy, should demand their representatives hang up the phone when the calls come in from wind and automaker executives asking for even more.”

Orsted, a Danish offshore wind company, announced on Tuesday that it cancelled two major developments off the coast of New Jersey. Company executives blamed factors like inflation, interest rates and supply chain woes, saying that the problems had left the firm little choice but to walk away from the major projects.

Since the cancellations, the company’s stock price has fallen even further and S&P has indicated that it is considering downgrading the company’s credit rating. But Orsted is not the only offshore wind company showing signs that the industry may be in an extremely precarious position.

The U.S. offshore wind industry appears to be “fundamentally broken” due to problems with permitting and rising costs, Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, the head of gas and low carbon energy for British Petroleum (BP), said at a conference on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg News. “There’s a fundamental reset needed,” she said, suggesting that there could be solutions and that her company is working with its partner to assess “options for their U.S. offshore wind projects to mitigate the effect of inflationary pressures and permitting delays.”

Under Biden’s leadership, the federal government has heavily subsidized the offshore wind developments, primarily via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), in a bid to have the industry provide enough power to source electricity for 10 million American homes by 2030. The state of the industry is so dire that numerous energy market experts told the DCNF that a government bailout for the industry may be just around the corner.

The offshore wind goal is just one slice of the administration’s efforts to decarbonize the American energy sector by 2035 and then have the entire U.S. economy reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

Like offshore wind, the administration is counting on solar power to emerge in the coming years as a replacement for the energy generated by fossil fuel infrastructure. Solar power is also similar to wind power in that it is intermittent and currently more expensive than power sourced by natural gas and other fossil fuels, according to Peter Grossman, an emeritus professor of economics for Butler University.

Solar companies have generally had a rough 2023 so far, and this past week has been no different: while stocks are down for several leading solar producers, Sunlight Financing, a company which provided loans to consumers to buy residential solar systems, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday. Several leading home system installers pared back their outlooks for the year this week as well, as higher interest rates and inflation have cooled consumer demand, according to Bloomberg News.

“The green industry makes products that are both very expensive and mostly ineffective,” Larry Behrens, the communications director for Power The Future, told the DCNF. “Yet, instead of admitting reality, we have an administration in Washington that is doubling-down and working overtime to force these terrible products into our lives,” he continued, adding that “thanks to the laughably-named Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden has a $369 billion dollar green slush fund and he’s put a political operative in charge of it… Joe Biden knows that when the green agenda fails, his legacy will sink even further, so there will be no dollar amount too high to keep green boondoggles afloat for as long as possible.”

The White House, Orsted, BP and Sunlight Financing all did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.