Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said that there is “not a future” for offshore wind projects in the US.
Burgum made the comments speaking alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright at a natural gas conference in Milan, Italy this week.
“We’re ending the era of the mass subsidies of offshore wind,” Burgum said.
“Many of those projects weren’t really about electricity, they were about tax subsidies.”
Burgum also pointed to what he called “a rising amount of actual resistance” to offshore wind development from marine fisheries, the Department of Defence, and the Federal Aviation Authority, and said that the projects were moved through “a very fast ideologically-driven permitting process”.
“It is likely that there will not be future offshore wind built in America,” Burgum told the conference.
There are five offshore wind projects currently under construction in the US, and Burgum said his department is “taking a look at each of those”.
“If you want to invest in Energy in America, we’re looking for all kind of investment dollars”, Burgum added.
Burgum’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued stop-work orders to both Equinor’s 810MW Empire Wind 1 and Orsted’s 704MW Revolution Wind, though the former was later rescinded following negotiations with the state of New York and the government of Norway.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, whose state has contracted 304MW of Revolution Wind’s capacity, told Politico this week that he is ready to “open up the conversation to other sources of energy, including natural gas”, but hasn’t been able to make contact with the Trump administration.