Meanwhile, Rhode Island bureaucrats give a big thumbs-up to SouthCoast Wind transmission line plan.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
President Donald Trump clearly has the climate cultists and green grifters among his top targets during his very busy second term, which began with his signing an executive order in January to halt new or renewed offshore wind leases.
Now it looks like the plug is going to be pulled from a massive offshore East Coast wind farm project.
Back in September, I reported that federal regulators were moving to revoke approval of SouthCoast Wind’s construction and operations plan, the final major permit required before offshore turbine installation. The project, located about 23 miles south of Nantucket, was slated to build up to 141 turbines supposedly capable of powering roughly 840,000 homes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
A federal judge has now ruled that the Trump administration may proceed with revoking federal permits for the project.
The Trump administration signaled its intent to reconsider the permit in September, claiming that the Environmental Impact Statement for the project may have “understated or obfuscated impacts” that would possibly result in noncompliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
District Court for the District of Columbia judge Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled in favor of the White House Tuesday, saying that the project developers would not suffer from “immediate and significant hardship” if the administration proceeded with the reconsideration.
The decision effectively allows the administration to strip the project of its federal approval, blocking it from being built under President Donald Trump’s second term.
The Trump administration argued that the environmental impacts may have been understated or misrepresented, invoking the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to justify the permit review.
The Trump administration said in September that it would weigh whether to revoke the Biden-era approval of the project. Months earlier, in March, the town of Nantucket sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in an effort to block the project. The town accused the agency of failing to comply with environmental and historical preservation laws when it issued the permit.
Soon after returning to the White House, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping order to halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. His administration has since gone after several wind farms that had been given federal permits by the Biden administration and were either under construction or about to start.
Despite this decision, eco-activist bureaucrats will continue to thrust the green-energy fantasies upon an unwilling population. Despite the judge’s ruling, which is likely to lead to the loss of a permit, regulators have approved construction of the transmission line for the wind farms.
…[T]he path is clear for the Massachusetts offshore wind project to run power lines up the Sakonnet River and across Portsmouth to Mount Hope Bay, with approval from the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board on Tuesday.
Power purchase agreements between the project developer and Massachusetts and Rhode Island utility suppliers are not yet signed — despite a Nov. 1 deadline — amid continued uncertainty over the staying power of offshore wind under the Trump administration.
…Ronald Gerwatowski, chairman of the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board, acknowledged the “new level of uncertainty” surrounding SouthCoast Wind. But, that did not deter the three-member panel from concluding its yearslong review for the transmission lines that will connect the project, once built, to the onshore electric grid.
“I am very satisfied with the application,” Gerwatowski said Tuesday. “By the time we reached the evidentiary stage, there was no evidence that would support the denial of this license.”
However, the federal court ruling is a big win for local residents and marine life…especially the whales.
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Federal Judge Clears Trump Administration to Revoke MA Offshore Wind Project Approval
It’s all falling into Trump’s lap. Is he on a roll? Bring out the [climate] thumbscrews…
Donald Trump has sent a letter to the BBC threatening legal action.
The US president wrote to the corporation on Monday as it apologised for the misleading editing of one of his speeches in a Panorama documentary.
Tim Davie and Deborah Turness quit as the BBC’s director-general and CEO of BBC News respectively after a Telegraph exposé of bias across the corporation, which first revealed the selective editing.
The BBC said it had confirmed receipt of the letter, which was first reported by its news channel, and that it would respond to the president in “due course”.
Mr Shah called the president a “litigious fellow” and said he was considering whether to make a personal apology. – Daily Telegraph
The litigious president has every reason to see them in court. And it will be Joe Public who picks up the tab.
The headline is wrong. The Court did not clear the review as it has no say on the review. It just agreed to pause the Nantucket lawsuit while the review proceeds.
The BBC is in the wrong – big time.
The left in this country has been having fits. They are declaring that suing a new organization for libel proves that you have no respect for free speech.
From my perspective, I don’t think Trump has any desire to punish Joe Public for the misdeeds of a biased MSM. I have hopes that the President and Mr. Farage will have a very public chat in which the President agrees to drop the lawsuit should Parliament revoke the BBCs power to require a license to watch live television, and Farage agrees to make that happen should Reform be elected into power.
If what I have read is correct, a substantial percent of the voters in UK resent having to pay the fee. For Trump and Farage to unite against it would be tremendously popular. It would translate into votes for Reform, and Trump would get the satisfaction of punishing only those who tried to harm, not Joe Public.
It’s all very well those at the top resigning, but when are the perpetrators of this, and other, lies going to be dismissed with neither recourse nor recompense?
Climate activists and the politicians who support them are convinced that Donald Trump and the political movement he leads is merely a passing storm which will be stopped dead in its tracks when Democrats take control of the Congress in January of 2027; and which will be quickly and completely reversed starting in January of 2029 when a Democrat once again occupies the Oval Office.
These climate activists and politicians will be doing what they can to keep their wind and solar projects alive until the political victories they are highly confident they can achieve in 2026 and in 2028 against Donald Trump and his America First movement will put their projects back on track as if Trump had never been in office for a second term.
In the meantime, ancillary projects like the power transmission upgrades in places like New York and Rhode Island needed to support offshore wind will continue to move forward under the assumption that any and all projects cancelled by Trump can be quickly revived once he is out of office.
I’m betting that for the 2027 elections, few Democrats will be preaching green energy. I think the majority of Americans don’t want to hear that and the politicians know it. So, for the Dems, it won’t be a formula for winning.
Joseph Zorzin: “I’m betting that for the 2027 elections, few Democrats will be preaching green energy. I think the majority of Americans don’t want to hear that and the politicians know it. So, for the Dems, it won’t be a formula for winning.”
The Democrats have adopted the affordability crisis as their main pathway to victory in the 2026 and 2028 elections. (It’s a reprise of “It’s the economy, stupid!” from1992.)
They are pushing a full-blown socialist economic prescription as their main means for solving the affordability crisis and for winning the next two election cycles, while using populist economic rhetoric as their method of communicating to the voters.
Solid election victories in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and California clearly demonstrate that their message has traction among the voters. Pushing the alleged affordability of green wind and solar energy can be, and will be, one element of their campaign sloganeering and of their socialist energy policy platform.
Here in the US, one of two competing populist economic philosophies will eventually win out. Either it will be Trump’s America First version of economic populism, or it will be Mamdani’s socialist/communist version.
I would love to know the genesis of ‘affordability’ as the Dem’s rallying cry in recent months. I have to admit that it’s pure genius on the part of our Left to whitewash socialism, which is effectively the coercive re-distribution of goods and services from productive citizens to their non-productive supporters. Unfortunately, for the latter, they’ll eventually find out there’s nothing more scarce or expensive than free stuff, notwithstanding the nattering of useful idiots like Zoltar, AOC or Bernie.
When is somebody going to point out that if there is an affordability crisis it is because of the accumulated inflation of 20+% during Biden’s 4 years and that can’t be undone in 9 months.
Keeping out pipelines while approving transmission lines to nowhere is the method of their propaganda madness.
“Solid election victories in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and California clearly demonstrate that their message has traction among the voters.”
In mostly ‘deep blue’ areas or ‘purple’ (Virginia)…I seriously don’t think anything can be taken from these recent elections. Besides the elections taking place in mostly Democrat strong holds, turnout was extremely low. Seriously in New York the message was that the only Republican running for Mayor should drop out so that a slightly less socialist Democrat could possibly win.
Rent in many American cities is too much for many people. They seem to think society must make those cities affordable for them. Common sense says if they can’t afford to live in the city of their choice, they should look elsewhere. Just like the way you can’t always get the job you want or the mate you prefer. Reality doesn’t work that way.
Maybe a modular nuclear reactor can be built to utilize those transmission lines?
They are in essence being hoist by their own petard. Good to see. Big Bad Wind is going down. Good riddance.
I was going to “correct” the reference, but it was already correct. oops. “The phrase “hoist by his own petard” originates from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” specifically in Act 3, Scene 4, and refers to being harmed by one’s own plot or scheme.”
If only somehow we could use all the wind and hot air from politicians and climate blowhards and windbags…”free” energy forever!
Breaking…
Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion unless they retract the Panorama documentary.
How can something that is all over the internet be retracted? And the apology that has supposedly been made does not count as anything more than an admission of guilt. Only a prime time explicit apology would be adequate.
The BBC can and should retract their misinformation.
The retraction can and should be shouted far and wide.
With the wording “misinforming the world” included
The people running the project must be so relieved.
1) They don’t have to pretend not to see the problems
2) They can blame someone else that it ended.
This confuses me:
Who in their right mind would waste money building a transmission line which will transmit nothing? — Government, of course, because it is other people’s money; but are they really that daft, to build a facility which will never be used? Or is this just some face-saving gesture which doesn’t actually start the construction process?
The confusion is in the article. The judge’s ruling has nothing to do with the permit.
No, I understood that they are two separate actions. The article is perfectly clear.
What I’m asking is whether the greenies are dumb enough to go ahead and build the useless transmission line out of spite.
The wind project is under construction and moving right along so the transmission line is timely. The Feds ability to stop it is far from clear. Nor have they made any attempt to do so at this point.
Evidently, no. “The 2.4 GW SouthCoast Wind project is currently paused and under reconsideration by the federal government, placing its future in significant uncertainty.”
“Project Status: The project is listed as “paused” in recent industry trackers due to the permitting freeze and the ongoing federal challenges.
In essence, while the project had previously received its final major federal approval and progress was being made on state-level transmission permits, the current administration’s intervention has put the entire project on hold pending further review, potentially delaying it by several years or leading to its cancellation.”
Perhaps the regulators see the loss of the Federal permit as a temporary setback which will be rectified in 1-2 election cycles. In the interim, if I’m the regulated utility, and my regulators are really ok with offshore wind, why wouldn’t I build the transmission line if the latter allowed me to put it into rate base? In other words, never underestimate the stupidity of a utility beholden to a stupid regulator.
Thank you. That is what I was asking.
Except they have not lost the permit and the project is well into construction.
Nope.
Seriously? How old are you? Sorry but how is this anyway surprising? For one thing its 2 different regulatory regimes, 1 federal the other state. And its a ‘3 member panel’, not very hard to see 3 stupid people building transmission lines to no where, wasting millions of tax payers money and patting themselves on the back for a ‘job well done’.
The only hope is that after the wind farms are canceled, someone gets the bright idea to build a nuclear or natgas plant at the other end.
That is not what the Judge ruled. They merely ruled that the present lawsuit filed by Nantucket against SouthCoast Wind will stop while the Administration reviews the permits, which is what the Admin requested. If the permits are revoked then the case becomes moot so it makes sense to wait and see. This Court cannot stop the review so it did not rule that the review can proceed.
The entire project is on hold.
Now, direct all the money that was going to be pissed away on that crap and build gas fired and nuclear.
Tanya Chutkan? If the Trump Administration got a favorable decision out of one of the
more TDS afflicted judges, it must be a very
strong case.
Not really. The judge just paused the case because if the Feds stop the project there will be no case. As the judge said it was a matter of efficiency. No law involved.
You can’t rest for a minute with the NY/Mass/RI axis of climate evil. They will add another climate or income tax levy on the rich to prop up the offshore wind companies until they can move forward again.
“141 turbines supposedly capable of powering roughly 840,000 homes”
So one of these monstrosities only “powers” 6 (six) homes???
The project would not have provided electricity to 840,000 homes. On average it might have powered 280,000 less line losses and DC/AC conversion losses, and between 0 and 840,000 homes depending on the weather. It would have been 0 for about 20% of the time.
More good news. We shouldn’t have to go through any of this. Wind and solar can’t operate without massive government money and mandates everybody knows that. If they can’t stand on their own why are we wasting our time, money and resources on them? Stop it, this is madness. Build things that work like fossil fuel and nuclear generators. This isn’t hard!
Meanwhile we’re going to become a fickles superpower-
Renewables rollout suffers setback as $1 billion super battery ‘beyond repair’
Just you wait and see skeptical folks.
Breaking news: The Williams Company northeast pipeline project approval for delivery of gas from PA to NYC area was approved on the third go round.