Interior Secretary Doug Burgum leveled the Trump administration’s latest broadside at the struggling U.S. offshore wind industry on Monday, ordering an immediate suspension of activities at the five big wind projects currently in development.
“Today we’re sending notifications to the five large offshore wind projects that are under construction that their leases will be suspended due to national security concerns,” Burgum told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “During this time of suspension, we’ll work with the companies to try to find a mitigation. But we completed the work that President Trump has asked us to do. The Department of War has come back conclusively that the issues related to these large offshore wind programs have created radar interference that creates a genuine risk for the U.S.”
Predictably, reaction to Burgum’s order was immediate, with opponents of offshore wind praising the move, and industry supporters slamming it. In Semafor’s energy-related newsletter on Tuesday, energy and climate editor Tim McDowell quotes an unnamed ex-Energy Department official as claiming, “the Pentagon and intelligence services, which are normally sensitive to even extremely low-probability risks, never flagged this as a concern previously.” (RELATED: Trump Admin Orders Offshore Wind Farm Pauses Over ‘National Security Risks’)
Yet, a simple 30-second Google search finds a wealth of articles going back to as early as October 2014 discussing ways to mitigate the long-ago identified issue of interference with air defense radars by these enormous windmills, some of which are taller than the Eiffel Tower. It is a simple fact that the issue was repeatedly raised during the Biden Administration’s mad rush to speed these giant windmill operations into the construction phase by cutting corners in the permitting process.
In May, 2024, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) own analysis related to the Atlantic Shores South project contains a detailed discussion of the potential impacts and suggests multiple ways to mitigate for them. An Oct. 29, 2024 memo of understanding between BOEM and the Biden Department of Defense calls for increased collaboration between the two departments as a response to concerns from members of Congress and others related to these very long-known potential impacts.
The Georgia Tech Research Institute published a study dated June 6, 2022 detailing “Radar Impacts, Potential Mitigation, from Offshore Wind Turbines.” That study was in fact commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), a private non-profit that functions as an advisory group to the federal government.
Oh.
A report published in February 2024 by International Defense Security & Technology, Inc. describes the known issues thusly:
“Wind turbines can create clutter on radar screens in a number of ways. First, the metal towers and blades of wind turbines can reflect radar signals. This can create false returns on radar screens, which can make it difficult to detect and track real targets.
“Second, the rotating blades of wind turbines can create a Doppler effect on radar signals. This can cause real targets to appear to be moving at different speeds than they actually are. This can also make it difficult to track real targets.”
The simple Google search I conducted returns hundreds of articles dating all the way back to 2006 related to this long-known yet unresolved issue that could present a very real threat to national security. The fact that the Biden administration, in its religious zeal to speed these enormous offshore industrial projects into the construction phase, chose to downplay and ignore this threat in no way obligates his successor in office to commit the same dereliction of duty.
Some wind proponents are cynically raising concerns that a future Democratic administration could use this example as justification for cancelling oil and gas projects. It’s as if they’ve all forgotten about the previous four years of the Autopen presidency, which featured Joe Biden’s Day 1 order cancelling the 80% completed Keystone XL pipeline, a year-long moratorium on LNG export permitting, an attempt to set aside more than 200 million acres of the U.S. offshore from future leasing, and too many other destructive moves to detail here.
Again, a simple web search reveals that experts all over the world believe this is a real problem. If so, it needs to be addressed as a matter of national security. Burgum is intent on doing that. All half-baked talking points aside, this really isn’t complicated.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
