Efforts continue to build offshore floating wind farms here, as the calendar changes over with the new year; but there’s an ill wind blowing in from Mar-a-Lago in Florida, as the Trump Administration gets ready to take office on Jan. 20.
President Donald Trump has made little bones about his displeasure with offshore wind (OSW) in general, decrying the technology as damaging in several ways including costs.
Last week, the President-elect, in his first big press conference since winning the Presidency in November, said wind energy was far too expensive and he would end it in favor of increasing oil and gas exploration, his often-stated mantra of “drill baby drill.”
The President also referred to an increase in whales stranding on the beaches on the East Coast, in particular Wright Whales, the most endangered of all the leviathans.
Some have blamed OSW on the deaths of whales and dolphins — cetaceans in general — that have been documented on the U.S. East Coast. However, government regulators and the energy companies dispute that sonic testing and the hum emanating from the installed wind turbines, is causing the animals to beach themselves.
Though the new President apparently doesn’t agree. “Wind energy is driving the whales crazy,” President Trump said to the nation.
President Trump’s opposition to offshore wind energy is the latest twist of fate for the fledgling industry seeking to build huge projects off America’s Coastlines. Normally, big industry guys like Mr. Trump would be supportive of such a movement, but instead this issue has the conservative leader holding proverbial hands with environmentalists like Mandy Davis, the president of the local REACT Alliance and of the “National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance,” or NOOA, an association of like-minded groups nationally that have banded together to fight offshore wind development on the East Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Coast.
Having Trump essentially on their side is great but Davis said their fight is far from over on a State level.
“Some of the states — California and New York — their Governors have totally bought into this. It’s going to be a real fight.”
She said one other positive for their cause is that Equinor — one of three entities that bought leases in the so-called Morro Bay Call Area — put its preliminary work in State waters on hold, but Davis said the others appear to be moving forward.
Equinor announced that it was delaying the sound testing in State waters (inside 3 miles from shore). Two of the three companies have completed the underwater sound testing in the actual call area and the third has yet to announce the start of its test work. Equinor was first to get permits from the Coastal Commission to work in State waters.
The companies must do a plethora of studies from depth soundings and mapping of the seafloor to identify things like rocks and reefs they’ll need to avoid when they set their turbines’ moorings and trench the bottom to lay the transmission cables.
“Equinor has backed down here,” Davis said, “but they doubled-down on the East Coast.” She added that after Trump’s dissing of offshore wind and vow to end subsidies, Equinor changed tactics. “They’re getting private funding,” she said.
As it stands now, she said, Equinor plans to start the testing in State waters in April, which she thinks is the worst possible time. That’s when gray whale mothers and their newborn calves are migrating through on their way to Alaska and the summer feeding grounds. That’s perhaps the worst possible time for high-decibel sound testing in the water.
“They would be right in the coastal waters,” she said. That’s also about the time baby elephant seals leave their nursery beach at Piedras Blancas and venture out to sea.
“From a biological standpoint,” Davis said, “it’s horrendous timing.”
But beyond the environmental concerns, Davis and the protest groups feel the whole process is backwards.
“The absurdity of BOEM,” Davis said, referring to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “The companies are getting permits without completing a construction or an operations plan. They’re making a statement on environmental impacts when they don’t even have a project. It’s as ass-backwards as you can get.”
She hopes everyone, if they get a chance, will speak to a politician or industry spokesperson from these companies, and ask, ‘How much is this going to cost?’
“Ask specifically what this is going to cost?” she advised. “They never address that. We’re tired of the B.S. and we’re tired of being lied to.”
She has a message to the incoming Trump Administration. “We want to tell the Administration ‘We’re watching you. You promised to end this and we’re holding you to it.’”
NOOA is organizing a National Day of Action, set for Saturday, Jan. 18 at OSW sites on the East Coast and in the Gulf. REACT Alliance is organizing a gathering here at Morro Rock (see: www.reactalliance.org for details).
The Morro Bay event starts at noon on the 18th and they will have speakers, live music and informational booths about offshore wind. Then they plan to take to the streets.
Davis said the plan is to march as a group up the Embarcadero to Tidelands Park and back to the Rock.
The event is free to attend and she encourages everyone interested in offshore wind to come out and show support, rain or shine.
The plan is to film each of the NOOA Day of Action events across the country and edit them into a documentary.
And just because the new President is against OSW, the bureaucracy isn’t. “BOEM and NOAA are marching in lock step with President Biden,” Davis said. “We’re all hoping Trump issues an executive order and takes away their subsidy money.”
That too was something Mr. Trump mentioned in that press conference — the notion that wind can’t work without huge government subsidies.
But that too might not work, if Equinor and the others can successfully attract investors — like China — and forego government handouts.
The national group, NOOA is looking into lobbying Congress. “We can’t legally lobby,” Davis explained, “but we can hire a lobbyist.”
But their best ally perhaps is time and the growing body of knowledge coming out of the performance of the already-installed turbines on the East Coast and in Europe, where the costs are now hitting utility bills.
“In Europe they’re finding that offshore wind would hit poorest people the worst. It’s a real problem in Europe, and it could be a problem here too.”
