Is New England Wind Project Being Held Hostage For Greenland Deal?

A Siemens Gamesa turbine.

ENERCON Fan.CC BY SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have something in common, something not true across the Trump administration: They are both liked and respected in the segments of the economy over which they have dominion.

Burgum heartened the energy community when he said declaratively, “Energy is everything.” It is much quoted.

Both men continue to get high marks in the oil and gas sector. The administration’s fossil fuel-first energy policy sits well in the C-suites of Houston. Less so in the C-suites of a myriad of utilities.

And much less so since the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) abruptly issued a stop-work order on Aug. 22 for the Revolution Wind project, being developed by the world’s leading offshore wind company, Denmark’s Ørsted.

The wind power project is 80-percent complete and could, it is estimated, power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. It has serious implications for power-short New England going forward.

The Transportation Department on Aug. 29 announced the cancellation of millions of dollars of federal grants for offshore wind port projects, including: Rhode Island’s Port of Davisville, which lost $11.25 million in funding for modernizing the port to support the offshore wind industry, and the Salem Wind Port Project in Massachusetts, which lost nearly $34 million in funding for a new offshore wind terminal.

Trump Policy At Odds With Utility Trajectory

The administration’s fossil fuel-first policy is often at odds with the trajectory that the utility industry has been following for some time, greatly boosted by the unbridled enthusiasm for renewables, particularly wind and solar, during the Biden administration.

The world favors wind and solar — and U.S. utilities are enthusiastic about them as storage becomes ever more affordable. But U.S. utilities have to tread carefully, threading between their long-term goals of transition to renewables and the Trump administration.

Utilities I surveyed are enthusiastic about natural gas and cool to coal, unless they have a lot of coal in their generation portfolios, in which case they plan to exploit what is often a cheap source of power and profit

A major sign that the industry is going to have to work hard to keep on its glide path is the sudden stop-work order issued to the Revolution Wind project in the waters off Block Island, Rhode Island. It is smaller than the islands off the coast of Massachusetts, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, but it is a tourist magnet, too.

The $4-billion project was the jewel in the crown of Ørsted. The project, about 80-percent complete, is for 65 Gamesa 11-megawatt turbines. The foundations for all of these are installed, and 45 turbines are in place.

The project is designed to generate 704 MW of power which will be shared between Rhode Island and Connecticut.

In its Aug. 25 announcement, the BOEM said it was taking the action for national security reasons, but didn’t elaborate.

Whales And National Security

Four days later, in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, Interior’s Burgum first mentioned the large number of whales that have been dying and then reverted to the national security argument. He said the wind turbines were affecting military radar, making them a national security threat.

However, this was investigated by the Pentagon in 2023 and was given a pass. New structures often require special adjustments to radar, experts told me. Mostly, these are tall buildings.

The Daily Telegraph, the conservative, pro-Trump, London newspaper, reports that the wind farm might in fact have been brought into play as leverage as Trump continues to harbor designs on Greenland, which he would like the United States to buy or take over in some way from Denmark.

Hans van Leeuwen, the newspaper’s international economics editor, pointed out that the wind farm stop-work order has dramatically affected the Ørsted’s market value, and that Denmark might end up owning half of the company through its underwriting of a new financing round.

That, van Leeuwen suggests, might give Trump additional leverage with the Danish government in negotiating mineral rights or even political control of Greenland and its 57,000 people.

This is in keeping with the way Trump leveraged Empire Wind, a two-stage wind farm off New York and New Jersey, developed by Norway’s Equinor. It got a stop-work order back in May and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was required to make a deal. The trade was the rescheduling of proposals for pipeline development to bring more gas into New York.

Nothing is signed, but the White House said at the time that Hochul had “caved,” and the Williams Companies have activated their moribund application for what is called the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project.

Of course, a pipeline is small beer compared to the world’s largest island, Greenland, laden with energy resources and rare earths.

The political complications of the administration’s antipathy to wind together with its habit of holding one project hostage to its desires in quite a different arena is no comfort to the utility industry, which is caught between attractive prices for wind energy and improving storage, and a considerable investment in transition from the traditional to the new.

None of the major trade associations representing the utilities has issued a statement on the Revolution Wind project stop-work order. But you can bet it is felt as an ill wind, and a harbinger for future stress. They are learning that not all “energy is everything.”