Major environmental groups are partnering with foreign oil companies to industrialize New York’s oceans.
Activist organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have teamed up with foreign energy companies like Equinor and a subsidiary of TotalEnergies to proliferate offshore wind projects in the waters off of New York state. These national environmental groups are in favor of offshore wind as a source of carbon-free electricity generation despite the concerns of smaller environmental groups, fishermen and coastal residents that the industry could be causing significant ecological damage.
Sierra Club, NRDC and the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) are all members of the steering committee for the New York Offshore Wind Alliance (NYOWA), a coalition that works to advance the industry in the waters off the state’s coast. Joining them on the committee are Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil behemoth that has a renewables business, and Attentive Energy, a subsidiary of French oil and energy giant TotalEnergies’ U.S. arm.
Leading Offshore Wind Developer Pulls Plug On Two Projects https://t.co/k08s2bDfif
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 1, 2023
Additionally, groups like the New York League of Conservation Voters, Riverkeeper and WE ACT For Environmental Justice are NYOWA partner organizations. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is listed as a NYOWA partner on the alliance’s website, but TNC is not a NYOWA partner and has asked the organization to remove TNC’s logo from its website, a TNC spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Fake environmentalists are collaborating with foreign energy companies to industrialize our oceans and destroy fishing communities,” Dustin Delano, COO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Published, peer-reviewed research indicates wind farms could decimate haddock stocks, stunt lobster growth, raise ocean surface temperatures, and threaten the foundations of ocean food chains.”
NEFSA — which strongly opposes offshore wind development — referred the DCNF to four different published studies indicating that offshore wind may indeed disrupt marine life and ecosystems, including one paper that suggests low-frequency sounds made by operating offshore wind equipment can affect the behaviors of Atlantic cod larvae. Environmental groups that favor offshore wind contend that responsible offshore wind development is a crucial strategy for fighting the bigger issue of climate change.
Blue State Doubles Down On Offshore Wind After 2023’s Massive Failure https://t.co/Mp6ttDq7x2
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 26, 2024
Notably, the federal government has asserted that there is no available science directly proving that offshore wind development is connected to years-long “unusual mortality” events for two species of endangered baleen whales indigenous to the waters off the East Coast. Groups like Sierra Club have adopted the same position on the question of whether offshore wind is harming the whales.
However, Apostolos Gerasoulis, a computer science professor at Rutgers University, recently created and ran a complex computer model to analyze whale deaths along the East Coast over time and in light of the ongoing increase in offshore wind-related activity happening along the coast that started around 2016, according to the Maine Wire. Gerasoulis contends that his model shows there is a link between the whale deaths and offshore wind-related activity in the area.
“We know that the Sierra Club, NRDC and the National Wildlife Federation are promoting offshore wind projects developed by the subsidiary companies of European oil giants,” Dr. Lisa Quattrocki Knight, president and co-founder of an environmental group called Green Oceans, told the DCNF. “NGOs support these projects even though the government concedes that building Big Wind’s giant offshore turbines won’t have a material impact on climate change, and we know it will kill marine wildlife, destroy natural environments, hurt local industries like tourism, sailing, and the fishing industry, and will lead to higher electricity prices for regular people. It is undisputed that offshore wind is among the most energy inefficient and the most expensive sources of power you can find.”
Besides fishermen and groups like Green Oceans, many locals in coastal towns along the Atlantic seaboard are also rising up to fight against offshore wind, including in New Jersey and Massachusetts, according to UtilityDive.
The Sierra Club, NRDC, NWF, the New York League of Conservation Voters, Riverkeeper, WE ACT For Environmental Justice, Equinor, Attentive Energy and TotalEnergies did not respond immediately to requests for comment. NYOWA did not provide comment, instead referring the DCNF to the specific corporations and environmental organizations that make up part of its membership.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comment from The Nature Conservancy.
(Featured image credit: Photo by Gary Norton / DOE)
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