Donald Trump, who famously doesn’t like “windmills,” had his underlings find an excuse to pause billions of dollars in offshore wind projects, and what they came up with his comical: “national security risks.”
And get this: the “national security risks” are hidden in “recently completed classified reports,” which means: take our word for it.
This is about two things: the wind turbines adjoining his failing golf course in Scotland that he has been fighting for years, and the oil companies that donated billions to his re-election campaign, and are cashing in their chips.
“During this time of suspension, we will work with the companies to find a mitigation, but we’ve completed the work that President Trump has asked us to do,” Interior Secretary Doug Burghum told Fox News on Monday, advancing the claim that the turbines somehow are the source of “radar interference that creates genuine risk for the U.S., particularly related to where they are in proximity to our East Coast population centers.”
What’s really going on here: the Biden administration was moving the country toward a goal of dramatically boosting our wind-power capabilities, which provide power at a cost of pennies on the dollar to oil, when you account for the environmental damage of oil.
The likes of ExxonMobil and Chevron could have made moves decades ago to position themselves market-wise to be the leaders in the green-energy sector, but they instead doubled down on fossil fuels, because what do they care about the environment 40, 50, 100 years from now?
The people making these calls will long be dead by the time the piper needs to be paid.
The Trump pause puts the kibosh, for now, and for a while, on the $9.8 billion Dominion Energy offshore wind project.
ICYMI
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, consisting of 176 wind turbines, each designed to generate 14.7 megawatts, located 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, was projected to be able to generate enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes.
Dominion Energy, in a statement released on Monday, countered the Trump administration line, saying its offshore project “is essential for American national security and meeting Virginia’s dramatically growing energy needs, the fastest growth in America.”
Left unsaid there, about the fastest growth: Virginia is the capital of the U.S. data center movement, and those data centers are energy hogs.
“Stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, AI, and civilian assets. It will also lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs,” Dominion said in its statement, in which the company stressed that “the project’s two pilot turbines have been operating for five years without causing any impacts to national security.”
“Virginia’s All-American, All-Of-The-Above-Energy Plan requires a range of power generation assets, including natural gas, advanced nuclear, and renewables,” Dominion said. “Virginia needs every electron we can get as our demand for electricity doubles. These electrons will power the data centers that will win the AI race, support our war fighters, and build the nuclear warships needed to maintain our maritime supremacy. Virginia’s grid needs addition of electrons, not subtraction.”
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Chris Graham
