Show notes
Allen and Joel discuss the aggressive actions by the Trump administration against offshore wind projects. They also consider the broader implications for the wind industry, exploring onshore impacts, geopolitical maneuvers, and strategies for companies to adapt and prepare for future challenges. Register for the next SkySpecs webinar!
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You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with Joel Saxum, who's up in Wisconsin.
Joel, you've had some really cold weather up there the last couple of days. It's still September. Doesn't really make sense, Alan. I dunno. It's, it's
Joel Saxum: September, well, beginning of September and this morning when I let the dog out at 5:20 AM whatever time she decided to wake me up, it was 36 degrees here.
That's way too cold. Um, I knew, I, I, I went up here to escape a little bit of heat from in Texas, but I did not look to Frost advisories and like sweatshirts and vests and boots. Um, but that's what's happening. Yeah. Even, uh. Even a [00:01:00] few red leaves floating around on the lawn up here. So, uh, yeah, winter or fall is coming.
That means, you know what fall coming means is blade season for repairs in the northern hemispheres slowing down or shutting down shortly. So we're gonna get to hear what happened. Maybe a postmortem, hopefully on the, the blade repair season in North America.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it's been busy from what I could tell.
And plus there's a lot of construction going on. New insights. There's, uh, all kinds of turbines being planted right now. We're gonna be working through the end of the year easily, if the weather will support it. Very active time at the moment. And speaking of active time, this is our second take of this podcast, uh, just because so much has happened since we recorded last evening.
Uh, Joel and I thought we ought to take another try or attempt at this. Try to give you the, the most updated information. Not to say it's not gonna change over the next couple of hours after we finish this podcast, but, uh, the Trump administration [00:02:00] has launched its most aggressive attack on America's offshore wind industry.
Uh, the federal government is now working to withdraw permits for New England Wind one and two off the coast of Massachusetts. These projects are valued at roughly $14.6 billion by Bloomberg, NEF, and we power more than 900,000 homes. Uh, but the, the issue really is why are they being shut down? Nobody really knows.
Uh, and there's a lot of conjecture about it. And Joel, you and I were just talking before we recorded here. It may have something to do with Denmark.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think you wanna believe that. Smoother minds will prevail that, uh, logic and pragmatism is a part of government. But what it really seems is there's, there's favoritism and there's egos and there's feelings driving some of these, these decisions.
Right? Today we just heard or [00:03:00] just read that the, the Danish government is in California signing a policy agreement for collaboration with Gavin Newsom and the, the administration out there. We've, and, and this is like on, this is on top of, uh, Trump's rhetoric around, or the Trump administration's rhetoric around we would like Greenland.
And this day, Danish fight and all these different things happen in between the two organizations or the two countries there. So it's just kind of like posturing and, and we're back and forth and Sted is the big Danish company, right? So now Sted is feeling a little bit of. Pain from the Trump administration.
So the people who are close to Orid, IE, the Danish government come back and poke the bear on the side a little bit more. Um, so it just seems like there's a lot of, a lot of egos and things going on, and, and that's why it's hard to make sense out of, right? So like, why is this happening? There's no real reasons that we're being told as the general public, right?
Like there's this [00:04:00] veiled kind of, oh, there might be a national security thing here. Why we would cancel these projects. But at the end of the day, like this is kind, it's unprecedented. I mean, there's billions and billions of dollars sunk into these projects. And what's the recourse, like if they get canceled?
That or Ted and or their partners are just. Out. Like, how can you cancel a project in an offshore, uh, capacity that's 80% complete? Doesn't make sense,
Allen Hall: right? So Revolution wind was shut down a, a week or two ago at this point, and uh, that happened immediately after Denmark, the prime Minister of Denmark and the delegation from Denmark met with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and then.
Boom. Revolution wind is shut down. And now New England Wind one and two, which is an avan grid project, are in the same boat. So basically, uh, it triggered a series of events, or at least it appears that way at the moment. It appears to have triggered a number of events. And this also includes, uh, [00:05:00] withdrawing about $679 million in federal funding from.
12 infrastructure projects that are supporting offshore wind development. The single largest loss is Humboldt Bay, offshore wind in Northern California. Again, another Gavin Newsom thing, which is gonna lose $427 million in federal support, and in Norfolk, Virginia, the Fairwinds landing facility. Uh, supporting Dominion's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project lost, uh, $39 million.
Uh, so now the administration has threatened or blocked about eight gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, which is a tremendous number of homes that we would've powered. This is starting to get to a little bit, uh. Unsettling. So the, the news out of the New York Times last night as we're recording this, said I think six administration departments have been asked to go find ways [00:06:00] to threaten or stop offshore wind That's been headed up by President Trump's chief of staff.
So it's all the way to the top, Joel. It just feels like this is personal for some reason, and I don't know how it got to this level. But it is becoming a little more irrational, uh, than it was maybe even six weeks ago. And I know Phil was really upset about it six weeks ago. And I genuinely agree. Like some of the comments coming outta the administration are on.
I, I would, I would say they were bonkers, maybe is the right term, just being polite, but unfounded maybe is a really good term. Uh, and, and now it's like really escalated.
Joel Saxum: I think that the general public, and so there's a way, a couple ways to look at it. In my mind, I'm looking, is the hydrocarbon lobby this strong?
Right? I know they're strong, right? I'm in X oil and gas guy. I lived in Houston, energy, capital world, all these things and was a part of that, [00:07:00] uh, infrastructure for a long time. So I know the things that they can get done if they want to get done. Are they strong enough to turn the tides of an entire, basically like.
Western Hemisphere's energy production. 'cause that's what it's looking like, right? Like the changes that they're so extreme here have waterfall and cascading effects to all of the other economies around us. You're seeing investment possibly pouring into Canada offshore wind there. So that's changing their economy.
Changing our economy. Um, you'll, you'll see these things that. They're not just going to affect here in the us they're that these moves will affect globally. And you've, you've seen it, um, being pushed over to like these trade groups, going to from the us, going to the uk, going to Europe, you know, stop building wind, stop building wind.
You need LNG. So you can hear this undertone of hydrocarbon industry, LNG, oil and gas drill, baby drill, getting pushed. Is that. Is that lobby so strong that they've changed this? I don't know if that's the case. I know that's part of [00:08:00] it, but it does feel like it's this ego thing, right? Because you have this engagement of every, every, like you said, all of these different departments within the federal government, they're being told, do this, do this, do this.
And again, I I want to say this to the, the general public. If you don't know these things, like, so transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, he's the head of basically the federal DOT. The federal DOT is in charge of ports, so whenever you would go onto a port facility, you need what's called a TWIC card transportation Worker identification card, and that's a background check on you to make sure that you're okay with the national interests to enter these facilities.
Those ports are exactly where we will be operating offshore wind out of. They're the same places where we bring in goods and services from other countries and do trade deals and all these different things. It's the working part of our um, economy. For the maritime side of it, right? So because the federal government has control of these, they can do what they want at these port facilities, regardless of [00:09:00] state wants.
So that's where you see. You have already heard in the news President Trump and Gavin Newsom, man, not the best of friends, right? So it's California and and federal thing not going so well. So what is, what,