Offshore wind turbine projects are facing numerous challenges to their continued viability in the United States, including numerous legal challenges to the environmental validity of the rushed governmental-approvals and permits issued for construction of these projects. The lawsuits seek to invalidate these approvals, pointing out the many failures of the agencies to comply with environmental laws intended to protect our nation’s endangered species, marine mammals, and migratory birds. And, now, the new administration has issued an Executive Order that “removes from disposition for wind energy leasing” all areas within the Offshore Continental Shelf for wind energy leasing.
This Executive Order will, at least temporarily, halt the leasing of offshore areas for new projects, and the Executive Order will also temporarily stop the review and permitting of offshore wind projects that are underway pending the completion of a “comprehensive assessment and review of Federal wind leasing and permitting practices.” This assessment also will focus on the harmful environmental and the economic costs, associated with “the intermittent” generation of electricity and the effect of “subsidies” on the viability of the wind industry.
The wind industry is also facing problems arising from the failures of the massive wind turbines themselves, including the blade failure at the Vineyard Wind Project on July 13, 2024, which left the shores of Nantucket and neighboring communities littered with dangerous and toxic materials from a blade that broke apart and fell from off of that Project’s turbines. Reports are that the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) will require Vineyard Wind to replace all installed blades manufactured at GE Vernova’s plant in Gaspé, Canada, which constructed the defective blade. We further understand that Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova must demonstrate that the newly manufactured blades will function properly. We can anticipate that blades that are similar to blades manufactured at the GE Vernova plant will also be subjected to the same kind of assessment to ensure that those blades also do not break apart and fall off the turbine.
Read the Executive Order here.
