DAVID BLACKMON: Trump’s National Energy Council Should End Biden’s Offshore Wind Boondoggle

With Monday’s confirmation of energy executive Chris Wright to serve as secretary of Energy, President Donald Trump now has his full team of energy and climate policy disrupters complete. Wright now joins EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to form the administration’s proverbial three-legged stool who will seek to affect a sea change in federal energy and climate policy over the coming four years.

One of the biggest issues this troika must now address is the reining-in of the profligate, wasteful federal subsidization of costly, environmentally disruptive renewable energy projects based on transparently unsustainable business plans. Trump acted early in his first days in office to invoke a freeze on permitting and construction of new wind projects on federal lands and waters, including the northeast Atlantic, where a set of Biden-subsidized boondoggles have created rapidly rising utility costs for New England residents, allegations of deadly impacts on whales and other marine mammals and conflict with the region’s commercial fishing industry.

The history of this subsidized-into-existence sector is too littered with examples of project delays, cancellations, renegotiations of ever-higher guaranteed power rates, demands for more and more subsidies, and billion-dollar corporate write-downs to enumerate here. The latest examples came in January when Shell pulled its planned $1 billion investment in the Atlantic Shores project off the coast of New Jersey. A few days later, New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities abandoned plans for a fourth offshore wind solicitation for bids, effectively killing Atlantic Shores.

On Monday, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, while referring to offshore wind as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to create tens of thousands of jobs, drive an entirely new manufacturing supply chain, and secure energy independence,” agreed with the Board’s action, saying that the “offshore wind industry is currently facing significant challenges, and now is the time for patience and prudence.”