WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has directed five large-scale wind projects under construction off the East Coast to suspend their activities for at least 90 days, according to letters from the Interior Department obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, which provide new details on the government's move to pause the offshore ventures.
During the pause, the Interior Department will coordinate with project developers “to determine whether the national security threats posed by this project can be adequately mitigated,” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said in a letter to project developers. The 90-day period can be extended if necessary, the ocean management agency said.
The administration announced Monday it was suspending the offshore wind projects because of national security concerns. Its announcement did not indicate whether the pause was limited, nor did it reveal specifics about the national security concerns.
It was the latest step by the Trump administration to hobble offshore wind in its push against renewable energy sources. It comes two weeks after a federal judge struck down President Donald Trump's executive order blocking wind energy projects, calling it unlawful. The move angered local officials who have supported the projects and posed a new threat to offshore wind development that has faced increasing pressures since Trump took office.
The letter to the developers said the Defense Department completed a recent assessment regarding the national security implications of offshore wind projects and provided senior leadership at Interior with new classified information, "including the rapid evolution of relevant adversary technologies and the resulting direct impacts to national security from offshore wind projects."
The potential impacts are “heightened by the projects’ sensitive location on the East Coast and the potential to cause serious, immediate and irreparable harm to our great nation,” the letter said. The letter was signed by Matthew Giacona, the acting director of BOEM and a former lobbyist for the National Ocean Industries Association.
Kirk Lippold, a national security expert and former Commander of the USS Cole, said concerns about wind turbines' possible effects on radar systems “have been known for decades.”
While Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said new classified information indicates turbines may pose a national security threat, “I want to know what’s changed?” Lippold said in an interview on Tuesday. “What threat vector has changed? Have the Chinese developed new weapons or techniques that we’re unaware of and can’t fight against?”
“To my knowledge, nothing has changed in the threat environment that would drive us to stop any offshore wind programs,” he said.
House Democrats, meanwhile, have called for an ethics investigation into Giacona's actions since taking over at the agency that manages offshore waters. Giacona's work may directly overlapped with his prior lobbying work for the ocean industries group, Democrats said.
A spokesperson for Interior said Giacona “is a highly qualified and ethically sound employee who is working tirelessly on behalf of this administration to make real change for the American people.”
Wind proponents slammed the administration's move to suspend the projects, saying it was another blow in an ongoing attack by the Trump administration against clean energy.
Democratic governors of four affected states — Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York — issued a joint statement Tuesday vowing to fight the action, which they said “lands like a lump of dirty coal for the holiday season for American workers, consumers and investors.”
Pausing active leases, including for projects that are nearly completed, “defies logic, will hurt our bid for energy independence, will drive up costs for America’s ratepayers and will make us lose thousands of good-paying jobs,” the governors said. “It also threatens grid reliability that is needed to keep the lights on.”
The statement was issued by Govs. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Kathy Hochul of New York and Dan McKee of Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, two Democratic senators said the lease suspensions mean that congressional efforts to approve bipartisan permitting reform are “dead in the water.”
The House approved legislation last week aimed at speeding up permitting reviews for new energy and infrastructure projects, seeking to meet growing demand for electricity. The bill would also limit judicial review as Congress seeks to enact the most significant change in decades to the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law that requires federal agencies to consider a project's possible environmental impacts before it is approved.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said Monday that with House approval, “there was a deal to be had that would have taken politics out of permitting, made the process faster and more efficient, and streamlined grid infrastructure improvements nationwide.”
But they said any deal would have to be administered by the Trump administration, whose “reckless and vindictive assault on wind energy” destroys the trust needed for true permitting reform.
“There is no path to permitting reform if this administration refuses to follow the law,” the senators said. Whitehouse is the top Democrat on the Senate environment panel, while Heinrich is the senior Democrat on the committee on energy and natural resources.
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McDermott reported from Providence, R.I.
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