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Even by his own standards, Donald Trump’s assault on the wind industry, especially its offshore arm, has been prolonged, savage and consequential.
This week the president ordered a halt in the construction of the near-complete $US4 billion ($6 billion) Revolution Wind project, a wind farm of 114 turbines off the coast of Rhode Island that by next year would have been providing enough electricity for 350,000 homes if the developer had been allowed to finish the job.
The Revolution Wind construction site. The project took a heavy blow when US President Donald Trump ordered a halt to it.Credit: Bloomberg
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said he was trying to educate other nations about the technology he despises.
“I’m trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I’ve done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying,” Trump said according to a New York Times report.
He said countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy. “I hope they get back to fossil fuels.”
Like many of the president’s more singular political positions – such as his strong stance against low-flow shower heads – Trump’s position in public office has traces in his private interests.
Back in 2006, Trump bought an estate north of Aberdeen in the north of Scotland with a plan to build the “world’s greatest” golf course, only to learn that some of the world’s most powerful wind turbines were already slated to be built just off the shoreline.
Trump lobbied for years against the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm, telling a Scottish parliamentary inquiry in 2012 that wind farms would damage its tourism industry. Asked to provide evidence, Trump declared: “I am considered a world-class expert in tourism. When you ask, ‘Where is the expert and where is the evidence?’ I say: ‘I am the evidence.’”
In a 2019 speech to young conservatives, he explained of the wind industry:
“I’ve studied it better than anybody I know … I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen in your life.”
Trump objected to wind turbines being built offshore from his Scottish golf course.Credit: Jeff J Mitchell
Upon his re-election, Trump made it clear that his views in support of fossil fuels and against green energy – and offshore wind in particular – would be reflected in US policy.
The impact of that is now reverberating around the world.
In July, BP, which like other oil majors over recent years had been recasting itself as an “integrated energy” outfit, raced back to fossils. It sold off 10 of its onshore wind projects and hived off its offshore wind assets into a joint venture in what it called a “fundamental reset”.
The shift in global sentiment driven by the Trump administration is being felt in Australia too.
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Last week, the Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor, another firm that over recent years had been adding a tint of green to its brown portfolio, announced it was pulling out of a joint venture with the Australian outfit OceaneX to develop a $10 billion wind farm off the NSW coast between Newcastle and Port Stephens.
Equinor’s abandonment of the venture, known as Novocastrian Wind, which was to have created 3000 jobs in construction, effectively killed it, to Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s frustration.
“Equinor is withdrawing from renewables investment around the world at the moment, which, I will be very frank with you, I find very disappointing,” he told ABC radio.
“They’ve withdrawn from projects in Vietnam, Portugal and Spain. They’ve cut their renewables budget from $US10 billion to $US5 billion, and we’re caught up in that, so that’s disappointing.
“Offshore wind is facing some global international investment headwinds right at the moment, partly driven by some uncertainty out of the United States. So we are caught up in that.”
Andy Evans, one of the Australian co-owners of OceaneX, traces a direct line from Trump’s assault on wind, and on offshore wind, in the US and increased difficulties the industry is facing in Australia.
In April, Trump forced a halt to Equinor’s Empire Wind 1 project near New York City, which was already under construction with the goal of providing the first wind energy to the city’s grid, and eventually enough for 500,000 homes. The abrupt stop work order lasted four weeks and cost the company about $US200 million before it was abruptly lifted.
Trump’s erratic decision-making added $US200 million to the build of an Equinor wind farm off New York City. Credit: Bloomberg
This sort of interference is having a profound impact on the industry around the world, says Evans.
“Looking at our project, [Novocastrian Wind], certainly Trump’s role in stopping work on the entire wind [build] for a month sent a great wave of hysteria through offshore wind industry and investment. It makes it harder and more expensive to raise capital,” he says.
“The challenge we have in Australia is that Australians are no longer investors in early-stage stuff.
“We want everything cheaply, and we want it now. So the challenge, certainly, as a developer, if we need to raise capital, we generally have to go offshore.”
What is less clear, though, is whether a slowdown in the nascent offshore wind industry in Australia will have a material impact on the government’s efforts to transition the economy away from fossil fuels.
Well, no, says Alison Reeve, director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program. Offshore wind does not exist in modelling before 2030 and in the Integrated System Plan produced last year by AEMO, which manages energy markets across Australia. In the years between 2030 and 2040, reliance on offshore is far less than on onshore.
Reeve believes any shortfall in the offshore industry can be made up by solar and onshore wind.
But this misses a crucial point, says Evans. Australia needs all the forms of renewables it can get its hands on, and to oppose a viable renewable industry on ideological grounds is to oppose jobs and investment.
Sceptics of offshore wind point out that it is far more expensive to build in the sea than on land, but Evans, also a key player in the Star of the South development off Gippsland, says offshore wind complements onshore projects because wind tends to blow at sea overnight and overland during the day. Together, they could provide something more like the base load power we are used to.
Besides, while the costs of developing floating wind farms in deepwater might be prohibitive, the waters off the coast of Gippsland are shallow and the winds strong and constant. Transmission lines already exist from coal plants that are slated to close with a workforce in place that is hungry for new jobs.
One renewables developer, who would not be named, said he worried that championing the legislation and regulations to allow for the creation of an unfeasibly expensive offshore industry in Australia had distracted Bowen from the more crucial existing technology and cost him valuable political capital, much as he admires the minister’s effort.
Opponents to renewables, he says, are echoing Trump’s language in Australia and using it to needlessly divide communities. “The way they talk you’d think transmission lines were out there murdering children,” he says.
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But that does not make him more optimistic about offshore wind. “It’s never going to get cheaper. It is all concrete and steel and labour. The sea is a brutal place to build.”
Bowen doesn’t look like backing down.
Celebrating the awarding of two preliminary licences for companies to begin exploratory work in a WA offshore wind zone at a function in parliament this week, the minister noted that it was not just the sea that made construction difficult, but misinformation from political opponents in Australia and from what he diplomatically called “global headwinds”.
But, Bowen said, “we don’t do these things because they’re easy, we do these things because they’re important.
“When you’re dealing with the biggest economic transition in the world, you don’t follow a linear line on a graph.”
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