In the Press...
New York Post article on Trump administration's halting of offshore wind projects'Trump admin scraps 5 offshore wind farms — including New York projects — citing "national security risks"'By Josh Christenson WASHINGTON — The US Interior Department announced Monday that it was immediately pausing leases for five offshore wind farms — including two in New York — “due to national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports.” The renewable energy projects included the Massachusetts and Rhode Island-headquartered Vineyard Wind 1 and Revolution Wind, a commercial wind farm in Virginia and New York’s Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind — several of which had gotten either funding or regulatory boosts from the Biden administration. Unclassified reports have previously cited radar interference, also known as “clutter,” prompting false alarms due to “the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers” of the wind farms,” the Interior Department noted in a press release.
In some cases, radar would also “miss actual targets.” “The prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. “Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” he added. “The Trump administration will always prioritize the security of the American people.” Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), whose brothers are both pilots, told The Post Monday that has been advocating against the offshore wind farms for years based on their potential to disrupt both aircraft and ships’ radar — for both civilians and military service members. “Camp Evans is located in my district, and that’s where the radars were created for World War II,” he explained, “and we knew before the [Mitsubishi A6M] Zeros hit Pearl Harbor about 40 plus minutes before, that they were coming because of the radars they deployed there, and they really made a difference.” “This is something that Xi Jinping just loves. Iranians just love, and Putin just loves because we’re blinding ourselves willfully — for what?”
Those concerns were confirmed in an April 2025 Government Accountability Office report that found the turbines — some as large as the Chrysler building — “can reduce the performance of radar systems used for defense and maritime navigation and safety in several ways.” “These include reducing detection sensitivity, obscuring potential targets, and generating false targets, according to a DOE report,” GAO stated. “In addition, offshore wind energy development may affect larger military exercises by obstructing flight and surface and subsurface vessel movement, according to DOD officials.” Smith also noted potential hindrances to roughly 1,000 US Coast Guard rescues annually — or the ability to intercept foreign drones, some lawmakers and experts speculated, that vexed the Biden administration in December 2024. Huge disruptions could also result like what air passengers saw earlier this year when a frayed piece of copper wiring caused a radar outage at Newark airport, forcing delays and cancellations of flights, he added. The Biden administration’s response, Smith claimed, was instead: “Build it and who gives a damn about national security and, you know, security of the people when they’re flying out of Newark or you name the place.” Roughly a third of all construction costs for the wind farms has been borne by US taxpayers, according to Smith. But that doesn’t begin to include the costs of clean-up efforts when a powerful hurricane hits the wind farms. Burgum informed the congressman that there’s concerns about the football field-size propellers being decommissioned for scrap metal within just 13 or 14 years — despite the wind projects touting environmental benefits, Smith noted. President Trump pledged to block all new wind and solar projects from receiving federal funding in August, calling the renewable energy sources the “SCAM OF THE CENTURY!“ Construction on Revolution Wind was halted the following month, only to be reinstated by a federal judge. Both it and Empire Wind had been contracted for six-figure contracts by the Interior Department under former President Joe Biden, according to a review of federal spending records.
More than half-a-million dollars was also shoveled out the door by Biden’s administration via a grant to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in December 2024, which in part funded “emissions target setting, emissions strategy development and community stakeholder collaboration” for Vineyard Wind. That funding all stemmed from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s marquee legislation focused on climate and renewable energy alternatives. The so-called green subsidies could top $1 trillion over the next decade. Rhode Island approved Sunrise Wind just weeks after the Biden administration gave final approval to the 65-turbine Revolution Wind project in August 2023. Both were joint enterprises between the Danish wind gian Orsted and a New England utility firm. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fumed over the Trump administration’s latest moves. “Trump’s obsession with killing offshore wind projects is unhinged, irrational, and unjustified,” Schumer said in a statement. “At a time of soaring energy costs, this latest decision from DOI is a backwards step that will drive energy bills even higher. “It will kill good union jobs, spike energy costs, and put our grid at risk; and it makes absolutely no business sense. Many of us have been fighting Trump’s war against offshore wind — a war on American jobs and American energy — and we will keep fighting to make sure these projects and the thousands of jobs they create and the energy they provide can continue.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Big Apple lame-duck mayor Eric Adams also slammed the decision, touting how the projects could have helped power 1 million homes. In July, Trump also called on the European Union to ditch the “ugly windmills” dotting the horizon of his Turnberry, Scotland, golf resort and other locations — and buy $750 billion in US energy instead. |
