By David Wojick
Recent Court rulings temporarily pausing Administration orders for offshore wind projects to stop construction have created widespread confusion. The orders have not been rescinded merely paused while the Court assesses them. This is the American system at work.
Not surprisingly the confusion begins with the left-wing press.
Politico says “Trump suffers major losses in his war on offshore wind”
Reuters says “…another legal setback for Trump”
PBS says “…handing industry another victory against Trump”
And so it goes.
None of this is true since the stop work orders still stand. All that has happened is that the Courts are going to look at them at the request of the impacted industry. This is standard procedure. It is called a preliminary injunction pending Court review.
Of course we are disappointed that this is happening but hardly surprised. When the Administration tells an industry to do something it does not want to do it routinely asks the Court to review the order and the Court stays the order pending that review. This is the “balance of powers” in the American system.
In this case the offshore wind industry had some serious arguments that the stop work order was hurting them. So the Administration has to have some good arguments for stopping them, which is what the Court will look at.
On the injury side my personal favorite is from Empire Wind off New York. They had a 3,000 ton steel offshore building coming in on a really big ship from Singapore (with lots of emissions). They needed to install this monster but the stop work order prevented it. There was no place available on the East Coast with that kind of crane capacity to store it.
This building is where all the turbine cables come together combining their outputs to be sent ashore via the massive export cable. Surely this is a serious new hazard to navigation. Imagine a steel ship hitting it while it was fully charged. Perhaps a cruise liner with a thousand passengers or an LNG tanker. Hopefully the Court is considering this threat.
Dominion Energy had a slightly smaller big problem off Virginia. Their brand new heavy lift crane ship was gearing up to start installing turbines. Dominion said it was costing $5 million a day to do nothing.
I have yet to see a written opinion on any of the preliminary injunction rulings but some of the quoted Judge statements are interesting. The one most likely to be true is that the Administration needs to be specific for each case.
For example if radar interference is argued they need to say what interference with which radars and what difference that makes? I suspect the Administration has a bit of work to do here, but maybe not as classified Navy reports have been mentioned.
On the other hand at least one quoted Judge’s statement is seemingly ridiculous. It said the military objections were with wind facility operations not construction. Surely if we do not want operation we do not want construction.
Some of the industry arguments were equally ridiculous. For example that offshore wind was essential for grid reliability. Wind actually degrades reliability because you have to have a reliable generator sitting there ready to ramp up and down as the wind ebbs and flows which is not easy.
Empire Wind actually claimed to power 500,000 homes when it should have said “once in a while” because it requires sustained winds over 30 mph for full power which almost never happens off New York. Maybe ten days a year if that.
The basic point is that we now have standard Judicial review of a major Administrative order. There is no winner or loser at this point. It is the American balance of powers.
Stay tuned to CFACT to see how this actually plays out. Do not depend on the hyperbolically green mainstream press.
Thanks David, important information.
PBS says “…handing industry another victory against Trump”
Industry?
Were some private corporations building offshore wind with their own funds in a competitive situation based on how their products would compete in a market?
New York is in nor’easter alley where winds can reach 60 mph. What were the engineers thinking? Did they cross their fingers behind their backs and hope the big wind will never blow?
”Once in a while”
First chuckle of my day (-:
Such fanfare over whirlygigs.
I seem to remember a pipeline under construction that was shutdown by a previous administration. Big losses for somebody in industry that the courts did not care to remedy if I recall correctly.
I submit that the Courts should decide that they have no jurisdiction, and these actions must be brought before the United States Court Of Federal Claims.
Do not depend on the hyperbolically green mainstream press.
Amen, brother.
While agreeing with much of this paper I have to point out that an LNG Tanker is one of the safest vessels on the water. The gas tank only takes up about the centre third of the vessel, the side decks are each about a third of the width, so hitting anything would struggle to breach a third of the way into the hull and then it would be an even bigger struggle to breach the very thick pressure tank side.
I am a little surprised though that there isn’t a suitable crane barge available to unload the 3000 ton building onto something somewhere.
Wind turbines ONLY generate unreliable electricity. It’s no wonder that wind turbines CANNOT attract private investment funds.
Wind turbines only exist because they are funded by government funds, which are taxpayer dollars that do not require a return on investments to the government that is funding those installations !
The work will remain stopped if the subsidies are removed.