Tag Archives: North Atlantic Right Whale

Environmentalism In America Is Dead

From Watts Up With That?

By the Robert Bryce Substack

Robert Bryce

The movement birthed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the early 1960s and Earth Day in the 1970s — a movement that once aimed to protect landscapes, wildlands, whales, and wildlife — has morphed into the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. Rather than preserve wildlands and wildlife, today’s “green” NGOs have devolved into a sprawling network of nonprofit and for-profit groups aligned with big corporations, big banks, and big law firms. In the name of climate change, these NGOs want to pave vast swaths of America’s countryside with oceans of solar panels and forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines. They are also promoting the industrialization of our oceans, a move that could put hundreds of massive offshore wind turbines in the middle of some of our best fisheries and right atop known habitat of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

The simplest way to understand how climatism and renewable energy fetishism have swamped concerns about conservation and wildlife protection is to follow the money. Over the past decade or so, the business of climate activism has become just that — a business. As I reported last year in “The Anti-Industry Industry,” the top 25 climate nonprofits are spending some $4.5 billion per year. As seen below, the gross receipts of the top 25 climate-focused NGOs now total about $4.7 billion per year.

These groups — which are uniformly opposed to both nuclear energy and hydrocarbons — have budgets that dwarf those of pro-nuclear and pro-hydrocarbon outfits like the Nuclear Energy Institute, which, according to the latest figures from Guidestar, has gross receipts of $194 million, and the American Petroleum Institute which has gross receipts of $254 million. (Unless otherwise noted, the NGO figures are from Guidestar, which defines gross receipts as a “gross figure that does not subtract rental expenses, costs, sales expenses, direct expenses, and costs of goods sold.” Also note that in many cases, Guidestar’s gross receipts figure doesn’t match the revenue that the NGOs are reporting on their Form 990s.)   

To understand the staggering amount of money being spent by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex, look at the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Colorado-based group founded by Amory Lovins, the college dropout who, for nearly 50 years, has been the leading cheerleader for the “soft” energy path of wind, solar, biofuels, and energy efficiency. (Click here for my 2007 article on Lovins.) Between 2012 and 2022, according to ProPublica, Rocky Mountain Institute’s annual budget skyrocketed, going from $10 million to $117 million.

Indeed, the group provides a prime example of how corporate cash and dark money are fueling the growth of the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.  Among its biggest donors are corporations that are profiting from the alt-energy craze. Last year, Wells Fargo, a mega-bank that is among the world’s biggest providers of tax-equity financing for alt-energy projects, gave Rocky Mountain Institute at least $1 million. On its website, Wells Fargo says it is “one of the most active tax-equity investors in the nation’s renewable energy sector, financing projects in 38 states.” In 2021, the bank bragged that it had surpassed “$10 billion in tax-equity investments in the wind, solar, and fuel cell industries. Wells Fargo has invested in more than 500 projects, helping to finance 12% of all wind and solar energy capacity in the U.S. over the past 10 years.”

Another mega-bank giving big bucks to RMI is J.P.  Morgan Chase, which gave at least $500,000 in 2023. I took a deep dive into alt-energy finance last year in “Jamie Dimon’s Climate Corporatism.” I explained:  

About half of all the tax equity finance deals in the country (worth about $10 billion per year) are being done by just two big banks, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America. The two outfits have the resources to handle the tax credits that are generated by renewable projects and pair those “tax subsidies” (the term used by Norton Rose Fulbright) with the capital financing needed to get the projects built. 

Last year, Rocky Mountain Institute got a similar amount from European oil giant Shell PLC, which has been active in both onshore and offshore wind. In addition, last year, the Rocky Mountain Institute published a report in  partnership with the Bezos Earth Fund, which claimed, “the fossil fuel era is over.” The Bezos Earth Fund, of course, gets its cash from Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos. Last year, Bezos’s group gave Rocky Mountain Institute at least $1 million. In addition, Amazon, which claims to be “the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy,” is a significant donor and was the sole funder of a report published earlier this year by RMI that promotes increased use of — what else? — solar, wind, and batteries. 

RMI also got at least $1 million from two NGOs — ClimateWorks Foundation and the Climate Imperative Foundation — which funnel massive amounts of dark money to climate activist groups. San Francisco-based ClimateWorks has gross receipts of $350 million. ClimateWorks lists about two dozen major funders on its website, including the Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Ford Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. However, the group’s tax filings show that it gets most of its funding from individuals, none of whom are disclosed on its Form 990. In 2022, ClimateWorks got $128 million from an unnamed individual, $45 million from another individual, and $24 million from another. In all, ClimateWorks collected about $277 million — or roughly 84% of its funding — from a handful of unnamed oligarchs. Who are they? ClimateWorks doesn’t say, but notes that it has “several funders that [sic] prefer to remain anonymous.”

Climate Imperative, also based in San Francisco, doesn’t reveal the identities of its funders, nor does it publish the names of all the activist groups it funds. But it is giving staggering sums of money to climate groups. Climate Imperative’s gross receipts total $289 million. The group’s goals include the “rapid scaling of renewable energy, widespread electrification of buildings and transportation, [and] stopping the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Elite academics produce studies that provide ammunition to the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. Last year, in an article published in the left-wing magazine Mother Jones, Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, claimed, “We now have the potential to rebuild a better America.”

Doing so, he explained, will require a much larger electric grid with “up to 75,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines by 2035.” That’s enough, he noted, to “circle the Earth three times.” He continued, saying the U.S. will also need utility-scale solar projects covering “an area the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.”

Jenkins claims we can have a “better America” by covering an area the size of eight states with solar panels (most of which are made with Chinese components) and endless forests of massive, noisy, bird-and-bat-killing wind turbines. Put another way, the Princeton net-zero plan would require paving some 239,000 square miles (620,000 square kilometers) of land with solar and wind projects, and that doesn’t include the territory needed for all the high-voltage transmission lines that would be needed!

On its face, the notion is absurd.

Nevertheless, the scheme, published in 2020 and known as the Net-Zero America study, got positive coverage in major media outlets, including the New York Times.

Despite the cartoonish amount of land and raw materials it would require, the Princeton net-zero plan shows how renewable energy fetishism dominates today’s energy policy discussions. Nearly every large climate-focused NGO in America claims our economy must soon be fueled solely by solar, wind, and batteries, with no hydrocarbons or nuclear allowed. But those claims ignore the raging land-use conflicts happening across America — and in numerous countries around the world — as rural communities fight back against the encroachment of Big Wind and Big Solar.

Perhaps the most striking example of the environmental betrayal now underway is the climate activists’ support for installing hundreds, or even thousands, of offshore wind platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, smack in the middle of the North Atlantic Right Whale’s habitat. Last month, I published this video showing habitat maps and the areas proposed for wind development.

Among the climate groups shilling for offshore wind is the Center for American Progress (gross receipts: $40 million), founded by John Podesta, who now serves as President Biden’s advisor on “clean energy innovation and implementation.” Last year, Podesta’s group published an article claiming “oil money” was pushing “misinformation” about offshore wind.

Rather than defend whales, the group claimed the offshore wind sector is “a major jobs creator and an important tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Who funds the Center for American Progress? Among its $1 million funders are big foundations, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gates Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Two familiar names, Climate Imperative and ClimateWorks, each gave the group up to $500,000 last year. On the corporate side, the group got up to $500,000 from Amazon.com and Microsoft.

Now, let’s look at the Sierra Club (gross receipts: $184 million), a group whose mission statement states that it aims “To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth.”

Alas, protecting wild places doesn’t include our oceans. In March, Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, defended the offshore wind industry, claiming that “fossil fuel industry front groups” were trying to make “whales and other marine species a cultural wedge issue.” He also claimed that “disruptions in the whales’ feeding patterns, water salinity, and currents are likely the result of climate change,” adding that “climate change perhaps is the largest overriding problem, and our transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy the solution.”Just for a moment, imagine what Podesta’s group, or the  Sierra Club, would be saying if those scalawags from the oil industry were planning to put hundreds of offshore platforms in the middle of whale habitat. The wailing and gnashing of teeth would be audible from here to Montauk. Those NGOs would be running endless articles about the dangers facing the Right Whale — of which there are only about 360 individuals left, including fewer than 70 “reproductively active females.” But since the industry aiming to industrialize vast swaths of our oceans has been branded as “clean,” the response from the Sierra Clubbers has been, well, crickets.

If the climate groups are seriously concerned about reducing emissions, they would be clamoring for the increased use of nuclear energy, the safest form of zero-carbon electricity generation. It also has the smallest environmental footprint. But the Sierra Club, in its own words, “remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.” Furthermore, leaders at the Natural Resources Defense Council (gross receipts: $548 million) cheered in 2021 when the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York was prematurely shuttered. What does NRDC claim we can use to replace nuclear? Offshore wind, of course. 

The punchline here is obvious: it’s time to discard the shopworn label of “environmentalism.” The NGOs discussed above, and others like them, are not environmental groups. Their response to the specter of catastrophic climate change will require wrecking our rural landscapes, the killing of untold numbers of bats, birds, and insects, and industrializing our oceans with large-scale alt-energy projects.

America needs a new generation of activists who want to spare nature, wildlife, and marine mammals by utilizing high-density, low-emission energy sources like natural gas and nuclear energy. We need advocates and academics who will push for a weather-resilient electric grid, not a weather-dependent one. Above all, we need true conservationists who promote a realistic view of our energy and power systems. That view will include a positive view of our place on this planet, a view that seeks to conserve natural places, not to pave them. 

CFACT Earth Day campaign soars over, rolls through Virginia Beach

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

On Earth Day, CFACT took its campaign against Dominion’s offshore wind initiative to new heights – this time by carrying out a protest that featured an airplane flying a banner saying “Save Whales — Stop Dominion Energy” over the boardwalk of Virginia Beach.

The stunt was conducted near the intersection of 31st Street and Atlantic Boulevard, near the famous statue of the Greek God Neptune. Hundreds of onlookers walking up and down the beach took notice and shot pictures, as did local television station WAVY.

The purpose of CFACT’s aerial show was to draw attention to the potentially devastating impact Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project will likely inflict on whales, and in particular, the North Atlantic Right Whale, of which there are less than 350 in existence. The energy company is posed to place a staggering 176 massive wind turbines, over 800 feet tall, right smack in the migratory lanes of the large mammals. CFACT, naturally, opposes this initiative and has launched a lawsuit with a pair of its allies to stop it.

In addition to the aerial stunt, the Committee also treated Virginia Beach residents to other forms of viewing its poignant Earth Day message. One included a large billboard on the main artery leading into town on I-64, and a second involved a roving billboard truck that drove throughout the city throughout the day. Both sported a similar message as the aerial banner and were seen by tens of thousands.

CFACT has long employed the use of street theater to make its voice heard, especially on the issue of saving whales from the impacts of offshore wind. Other CFACT stunts included flying a plane with a banner over Atlantic City, staging a boat protest off Newport, RI, and organizing citizens to form a “whale tail” in Cape May, NJ, in 2023. All of them received generous media coverage.

This is by no means the last renewable energy developers will hear from CFACT. Expect to see more such street theater aimed at exposing their reckless disregard for the environment and property rights in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Watch CFACT’s banner fly over Virginia Beach!

Save the Whales, Kill the Turbines – The Climate Realism Show #104

On episode 104 of The Climate Realism Show, we explain that to save the whales we need to kill these growing large-scale offshore wind projects. These so-called “wind farms” are much larger and do much more environmental damage than most people realize. Covering an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, one project off the Mid-Atlantic poses an existential risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. That is just one of many ocean mammals harassed and killed by these projects that will, at best, provide unreliable and expensive energy. Remember when “save the whales” was the cry of the environmentalists? Now they are fine with a spike in dead whales washing up on our Atlantic beaches as long as the “green energy” agenda continues apace.

The Heartland Institute is part of a lawsuit to stop to a major wind project in the Atlantic and save the right whale. We will talk about that effort with Craig Rucker and Terry Johnson of CFACT, who are also part of the suit. Join them and host Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken to talk about that, plus the Crazy Climate News of the Week.

Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET (12 p.m. CT) for the kind of climate realism you can’t find anywhere else, and join the chat to get your questions answered, too.

Coalition sues to block Virginia offshore wind project to protect the Right Whale

From CFACT

By CFACT Ed

Lawsuit filed by The Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the National Legal and Policy Center

Construction of Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project comes as more and more dead whales are washing up on the Atlantic Coast

The North Atlantic right whale is so critically endangered that federal agency says it can endure not even one human-caused death a year

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 18, 2024) – A coalition of public interest groups today is filing a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Biden administration officials and agencies seeking to overturn their approval of a massive wind turbine project off the shore of Virginia. The intent of the litigation is to stop Dominion Energy’s plans to start construction on May 1 in order to protect the North Atlantic right whales.

The lawsuit – which names the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and others – claims the agencies illegally approved Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project by ignoring glaring and obvious procedural errors that subjects the endangered North Atlantic right whale to further grave harm.

At a time when incidents of dead whales washing ashore on the Atlantic coast are spiking, the lawsuit would force Dominion to cease construction of massive wind turbines for its Virginia Offshore Wind (VOW) project in the migratory and feeding waters of the North Atlantic right whale – of which experts say only about 350 individuals remain. The suit claims BOEM’s “biological opinion” issued in September 2023 wrongly determined the project would not produce any irreparable harm for the whale as a species during either the construction, operation, or decommissioning phase of the project.

READ A PRE-FILING DRAFT OF THE LAWSUIT HERE.

The VOW project consists of the 176 giant wind turbines – each tower taller than the Washington Monument, with turbine blades longer than a football field – to be constructed in the open ocean 25 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia. If completed, the project would be the largest of its kind in the world.

This Dominion Energy project is but one of many massive offshore wind projects mandated by an executive order issued by President Biden on January 27, 2021, declaring that a “climate crisis” exists that “threatens mankind’s existence. The Biden administration has given fast-track approval to dozens of wind projects off the East Coast, with the goal of producing 30 gigawatts of electricity by 2030.

In issuing its “biological opinion” in September, NMFS only examined the impact that each of these projects, individually and in isolation, would have on the North Atlantic right whale. The agency did not, as it should have, issue a comprehensive and cumulative analysis examining the combined harm that all of the projects, together, would inflict on the whales during their annual migration path.

The courts, including the federal courts of the District of Columbia, have uniformly ruled that this approach is illegal in other endangered species cases because it misconstrues the language of the Endangered Species Act and creates, in the words of one court, “a type of slow slide into oblivion that is one of the very ills the Endangered Species Act was designed to prevent.”

The amount of federal waters leased for these projects constitutes an area larger than the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. The North Atlantic right whales would be forced to navigate a gauntlet of 32 separate lease areas from Georgia to Maine twice each year.

This lawsuit would cause Dominion to halt construction on the project until BOEM has developed a new “biological opinion”, providing verifiable protection against potential harm to the North Atlantic right whale caused by these projects.

A total of 55 dead right whales have washed up on the beaches of the East Coast since 2017, causing the federal authorities to declare an “unusual mortality event” and create two areas of “critical habitat” for the whale – one off the coast of Maine and one off the coast Georgia. The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species with only about 70 females capable of producing newborn calves.

The North Atlantic right whale is so critically endangered that NMFS has issued a determination for the chances of survival for the species called the Potential Biological Removal Rate (PBR). The PBR for the NARW is 0.7, which means that if the species is to survive, there must be zero human-caused mortalities of the NARW on an annual basis.

The following statements may be used with attribution. For more comments, to schedule an interview, or to speak to the attorneys handling this case, please contact VP and Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or call/text 312-731-9364.

Craig Rucker, president of CFACT and also one of the individual litigants, said, “This piecemeal, incremental step analysis by BOEM is a textbook violation of the Endangered Species Act. Every court, including the District of Columbia, has held this individual approach to be illegal. Dominion Energy must be prevented from engaging in any offshore construction until the NMFS issues a properly determined Biological Opinion.”

Heartland Institute President James Taylor said: “This erroneous biological opinion issued by NMFS is a classic example of abdication of its duty to provide meaningful protection for an endangered species. Playing politics with such an iconic species as the right whale is an unfortunate example of the Biden administration’s allegiance to climate alarmism.”

Peter Flaherty, Chairman of NLPC, said: “This project is not in the interests of Dominion Energy shareholders or customers. It was only approved because Dominion Energy has undue influence on Virginia politics through outsized contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. Because the political process is so tainted, we are pleased to join with CFACT and Heartland to make Dominion accountable through the courts.”

Marc Morano, founder of Climate Depot, said: “I am grateful that CFACT has stepped forward and filed a suit with such an obvious likelihood for success to halt the construction of these offshore wind monstrosities. This is nothing less than the industrialization of the habitat of the right whale, and the claim that construction of these wind factories will positively impact the climate is ludicrous.”

The plaintiffs are represented by David P. Holland, an experienced environmental lawyer with the law firm of Gatzke Dillon & Ballance LLP in Carlsbad, CA, and Paul D. Kamenar, Washington, D.C, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center.

###

Read a pre-filing draft of the lawsuit here

CFACT calls for banning offshore wind monopiles in favor of suction buckets to save whales

From CFACT

By David Wojick

Okay, this is not about sucking whales into giant buckets to take them away from offshore wind harm. Would that it were, but whales are way too big for that.

Instead, it is about a technology that can go a long way in reducing the harm to whales and other protected marine species. Simply put, suction buckets are a wind turbine foundation design that eliminates the need for those incredibly loud giant monopiles. Of all the ways that offshore wind threatens whales monopiles are the worst, while suction buckets are benign.

CFACT is calling for the banning of monopiles in favor of suction buckets. Mind you CFACT has made clear that they oppose offshore wind as destructive, ridiculously expensive, and completely unneeded. But if the Feds insist on having offshore wind it should sit on suction buckets, not monopiles.

To begin its call for banning monopiles CFACT recently posted comments to BOEM and NOAA via a proposal from the Beacon Wind project. Beacon is considering using suction buckets and wants to run some test cases. CFACT not only endorses these tests, it calls on this to be standard procedure on all offshore wind projects.

Suction bucket technology is simple and elegant. The bucket, less colorfully called a suction caisson, is a simple cylinder that is closed on one end. Installation is in two steps. First, the cylinder is set on the ocean floor with the open end down so it settles into the ocean floor a little way, thus sealing off the interior.

Then some of the water in the cylinder is pumped (or sucked) out. This reduces the internal pressure such that the external water pressure presses the cylinder into the sea floor. Pumping continues until the cylinder is fully embedded, where it can then be used as a structural foundation.

Instead of manually driving a pile, the ocean itself supplies the force. Three or four buckets are typically used to support a framework that then holds up the turbine tower.

The suction bucket technology has been around for many years, often used for anchoring offshore oil rigs. Using it for offshore wind is relatively new but Ørsted, the world’s biggest developer, has a 900 MW project underway off Taiwan so it is clearly feasible at the scale of US offshore projects.

Here is their description of suction bucket technology:

 

Bucket-Jacket_long-versionHerunterladen

Here are some central excerpts from the CFACT comments calling for a ban on monopiles in favor of suction bucket technology:

“Suction buckets are the perfect acoustic mitigation technology as installing them makes very little noise while installing monopiles is incredibly loud. Using them instead of monopiles will avoid the acoustic harassment of many thousands of marine mammals and other protected species.”

“This profound mitigation effect includes protecting the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.”

“BOEM and NMFS should mandate that suction bucket technology be used for all fixed foundation offshore wind development, instead of piles, except where it is completely infeasible, which may be nowhere. At present, it appears that all of the proposed and in-process BOEM offshore wind projects with fixed foundations use deadly noisy monopiles. This use of monopiles must be replaced with suction bucket technology which is very quiet to install.”

“As part of this mandate, NMFS should cease authorizing thousands of marine mammal acoustic harassments per project from monopolies. It should also rescind all those authorizations where construction is not largely completed. Projects under construction using monopiles can switch to suction bucket foundations for their remaining turbines and substations.”

I hope others will join CFACT in calling for the banning of dangerously loud monopiles in favor of suction bucket technology. Surely the Marine Mammal Protection Act requires this switch.

Read CFACT’s full submission here

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CFACT blasts offshore wind multiple-site assessment as ridiculous

From CFACT

By David Wojick

CFACT has long called for an environmental assessment of the combined impact of the clusters of huge offshore wind facilities being pushed by the Feds. Each facility is being separately assessed even when they share a boundary.

In many cases, it is clear that the adverse impacts will overlap and compound the harm to marine life. An obvious example is the incredibly loud and potentially harmful noise of pile driving. This noise carries over fifty miles, so if two sites are pile driving within a few miles of each other, the noise has to be much worse when the impacts combine.

The Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is supposed to do environmental assessment of offshore wind (even though their mandate is to get it built). They finally produced a combined assessment for six facilities off of New York and New Jersey. It is grandly called a Programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment (PEIS) of the New York Bight.

CFACT’s official comments on this assessment are pretty clear: it is junk. Here are some telling excerpts:

“Most of the 800 or so pages are nothing more than an academic discussion of the general environment, the sorts of impacts that might or might not occur, and what might or might not be done about them. There is basically nothing about this specific combination of projects.”

“In short, the academic acoustic case considered in the PEIS tells us absolutely nothing about the potentially huge noise impact of the six projects supposedly being assessed. There is literally no environmental impact assessment here. This vacuum seems to hold for pretty much the entire PEIS, with no real assessment of the six projects. There is certainly nothing of substance on noise.”

“As environmental impact statements go, this one is ridiculous.”

A number of important adverse impacts are not even considered, especially the lifetime operational impacts that go on for decades.

First, there is the combined operational noise of these six big facilities, some of which are actually contiguous. In addition to the endless turbine noise, there is the noise from the fleet of boats servicing these turbines.

Then there is the massive plume of reduced energy air created by the energy-sucking turbines. There is a large scientific literature on the potentially damaging effects of this plume on ocean life, especially reduced productivity in the food chain.

There is also the threat of a deleterious plume of suspended sediments created by air and water turbulence at each turbine tower. This smothering plume also reduces productivity.

I discuss these so-called wake effects in this article.

So the PEIS only looks at construction and basically tells us nothing about the adverse impacts of that. Ridiculous is right.

Note that NOAA shares the blame for this travesty of assessment. They are the experts on the adverse impact of noise on the marine life that they are supposed to protect. For example, the combined adverse effects of all these wind facilities the Feds are rushing into being could exterminate the North Atlantic Right Whale and other endangered critters.

Make no mistake, there is here a clear violation of the National Environmental Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and no doubt other laws. Something must be done.

CFACT-Comments-on-6-site-NY-Bight-PEIS-zHerunterladen

Offshore wind has a big up and down week

From CFACT

By David Wojick

The tumult in US offshore wind development has taken several steps lately, some forward, some not so much. Here is a quick overview of three serious events that are worth careful consideration.

First is the question of whether the developers will be able to bring forward their cost crisis and stick it to the ratepayers. As regular readers know, a lot of offshore wind project contracts with the client States have been pulled by the developers. They hope to come back with a higher price to cover their suddenly increased costs. The big Danish developer Orsted just pulled another contract in Maryland.

Well, the first of these new high-cost offers has indeed been accepted, in this case, by New Jersey. After all, the governor says, they want to go the impossible 100% renewables route as quickly as they can, making costs politically irrelevant. New Jersey ratepayers be damned.

There is a good chance that the other North Atlantic states will follow New Jersey, especially New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which have huge offshore wind construction targets.

Possibly countering this big push for wind is a major new lawsuit that has just been filed. The complaint is here: https://www.scribd.com/document/700695015/Offshore-Wind-Lawsuit

This suit alleges something that is obviously true, having been widely discussed here at CFACT. The Federal agencies that have quickly issued the offshore wind permits have simply ignored the destructive environmental effects. This is especially true for the collective impact of combinations of nearby projects.

Thus, the argument is procedural rather than substantive. Plaintiffs are not asking the Court to rule on the environmental science, which Courts are reluctant to do. They just want the Feds to do the proper job as mandated by the applicable environmental protection laws, of which there are several.

The complaint has two dimensions of consideration. One is the adverse impact of wind development on fish and, therefore, on the fishing industry. Thus, one of the complainants is a fishing trade association. One of my favorite legal maxims is “Never argue substance when you can argue procedure.”

The other dimension is the adverse impact on endangered species, especially whales. One of the plaintiffs is the Save the Right Whale Coalition. Here, the narrow issue is the threat posed by enormous offshore wind development to the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

Speaking of enormous, here is a good picture of one of the unbelievably huge monopiles driven into the sea floor to hold up an offshore wind turbine generator. The pile dwarfs the people. https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/03/eew-rolls-out-first-ocean-wind-1-monopile/

The noise of this pile driving is extremely loud, disrupting the lives of whales and other endangered species. This disruption is not only recognized by the Feds, it is specifically authorized by NOAA. The disruption is called harassment, and every offshore project has a pile driving harassment authorization, which typically includes thousands of hapless marine mammals.

That this systematic harassment can cause deadly behavior on the part of the thousands of harassed critters is one of the top ongoing complaints against offshore wind development. For example, scaring whales into heavy ship traffic where they can be struck and killed.

Which brings us to our third big event. The Feds have just released the final version of their so-called “North Atlantic Right Whale and Offshore Wind Strategy”. I say so-called because there is no strategy.

The Federal plan is to drive the thousands of piles on a bunch of big projects, many at the same time, and see what happens to the whales. The word “harassment” does not even occur in the document. Deadly harassment is simply ignored.

See https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-boem-announce-final-north-atlantic-right-whale-and-offshore-wind-strategy

If the Right Whales go extinct, there is no way to bring them back, so watching and waiting is not a protection strategy. This is the kind of systematic denial that the lawsuit calls out.

So there it is. The price of offshore wind may be going way up, but a lawsuit is asking for a more complete look at the adverse impacts. Meanwhile, the impact of offshore wind on severely endangered whales continues to be ignored by the development agencies.

The times they are a changing. Stay tuned to CFACT.

Coalition Files Notice of Intent to Sue Federal Agencies to Stop Whale-killing Virginia Wind Project

From Watts Up With That?

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service have violated federal law by finding that the Virginia Offshore Wind project will not result in the destruction of the North Atlantic right whale as a species 

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (November 14, 2023) — The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) announced today that they are filing with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) a 60 Day Notice of Intent to Sue letter for a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The violation is contained in a defective “biological opinion,” which authorizes the construction of the Virginia Offshore Wind Project (VOW). 

The 60 Day Notice is required by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for parties who wish to commence litigation against BOEM for failure to provide adequate protection of the North Atlantic right whale and other endangered species. The North Atlantic right whale is listed as “critically endangered” by governments of both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States. Numerous studies by federal and environmental organizations have found that only about 350 North Atlantic right whales remain in existence.

CFACT and The Heartland Institute assert that the Biological Opinion issued by the NMFS fails to consider the cumulative impact of the entire East Coast offshore wind program ordered by the Biden administration, and ignores the “best scientific information available” about the endangered population of the North Atlantic right whale. The biological opinion found that the VOW would not cause a single death of that species of whale over its 30-year projected lifetime — although it did acknowledge the wind project could result in Level B harassment. That level could, according to NMFS, result in indirect death, requiring the need for a “take” permit, which authorizes the “harassment” and potential killing of the North Atlantic right whale.

“We need to send a message to BOEM and NMFS that there will be legal consequences if they violate legal requirements for protection of the North Atlantic Right Whale,” said H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. “The Biden administration’s plan to industrialize the ocean along the East Coast must follow the law, and we will intervene, if necessary, to make sure that the North Atlantic right whale continues to exist as a species.”

“This letter officially puts BOEM on notice that CFACT is prepared to file suit in order to expose the agency’s clear violation of federal law in failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale,” said Craig Rucker, president of CFACT. “By refusing to consider the cumulative impact of the dozens of industrial offshore wind facilities, consisting of several thousand individual turbines planned for the East Coast, it adopted a piecemeal approach, which only considered each individual offshore wind project in isolation. This is clearly a ploy to artificially reduce the total impact of these projects on the North Atlantic Right Whale. This obvious violation of federal law was ignored by the oversight agencies but will not be tolerated by the courts.”

“BOEM has admitted that it produced noise control regulations for the North Atlantic right whale that were based on guesswork — not on the ‘best available science’ — as required by law,” said Collister Johnson, senior policy adviser for CFACT. “They have funded ongoing studies that will finally produce information necessary to determine the noise impacts of offshore wind factories on baleen whales, such as the North Atlantic right whale. The results will not be available until 2025, at the earliest. This is a further violation of federal law, in addition to ignoring the cumulative impacts.

“There is a reason why Dominion Energy’s stock price has declined by 50 percent over the past year,” Johnson added. “Investors know that Dominion’s wind project is a costly, risky gamble that has already driven most other East Coast wind developers to either renegotiate their utility contracts or abandon their projects altogether. If Dominion decided tomorrow to abandon this project, as it should, its stock price would improve dramatically, and a huge financial cloud hanging over its future would be removed.”

The 60-day notice letter instructs the federal government agencies to take corrective action to remedy the alleged violations. If no corrective action is taken, the signatories of the letter are allowed to seek relief through the courts. The most likely venue for this litigation would be the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

The firm of Gatzke, Dillon and Ballance has filed the letter as counsel for the CFACT and The Heartland Institute. The firm is currently representing plaintiffs in ongoing litigation against BOEM and NMFS, who are opposing construction offshore wind projects in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.

Earlier this year, more than two dozen large dead whales washed up on the shores of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, directly following 11 offshore sonar mapping activities conducted by wind developers. These “site characterization” studies use high-powered sonar pulses to determine the proper areas for placing the wind turbines. Sonar mapping has been found to interfere with the hearing capabilities of marine mammals. Environmental groups have successfully sued the Navy to restrict sonar mapping being conducted in the Pacific Ocean.

The 60-day notice adds to the risks faced by Dominion Energy as it attempts to build an offshore wind generation facility that would be the largest such project of its kind in the world. Siemens Energy, which has been designated by Dominion as the supplier of the huge 14MW turbines for the project, recently announced a write down of €2.4 billion for the 3rd quarter, leading to an annual loss of €4.5 Billion, due to costly mechanical failures in its new wind turbines. The company has said its turbine failures are a “quality issue” which “will take years to fix.”

Measured in megawatts, some 80 percent of the proposed East Coast wind projects have either been abandoned or are in the process of trying to renegotiate their power purchase agreements.

The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.

CFACT is a national non-profit organization founded in 1985 and based in Washington DC which believes that the power of markets and safe, proven technologies can offer humanity practical solutions to the world’s most pressing concerns.

A tale of two whale protection groups

From CFACT

By David Wojick 

There are two groups specializing in trying to protect the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, of which only about 340 critters remain alive, fewer every month, it seems. One is new and small, while the other is old and big.

The small group says that offshore wind development is killing whales, which I, too, believe, but NOAA denies. The big group, which includes NOAA and some of their funded researchers, is now up to thinking about the possibility that offshore wind might actually affect the whales. This dramatic difference is worth exploring a bit.

The small group is the Save Right Whales Coalition (SRWC) at https://saverightwhales.org/. The really big group, founded in 1986, is the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium (NARWC) at https://www.narwc.org/. The members of NARWC are a wealthy lot indeed.

The small Coalition is focused on wind, saying, “We are an alliance of grassroots environmental and community organizations, scientists, and conservationists working to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and other marine life from the industrialization of our ocean habitat through large-scale offshore wind energy development.”

The big Consortium says its mission is to “Eliminate human-caused mortality to right whales in critical habitats and migration corridors”. But their focus is on the old threats of fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes, never mentioning that both can be caused by the new and ongoing whale harassment noise from wind development.

Mind you, the big Consortium is now at least thinking about offshore wind. Their upcoming annual meeting has a session on it. Here are the presentations:

Session 2: Offshore Wind Interactions and Mitigation

— Upcalling behavior and patterns in North Atlantic right whales, implications for wind energy development

— Recommendations for real-time passive acoustic monitoring near offshore wind energy development activities to help mitigate risks to North Atlantic right whales

— From wind to whales: Potential hydrodynamic impacts of offshore wind on Nantucket Shoals region ecosystems

— Exploring overlap between NARW and ocean features: An autonomous-based oceanographic and ecological baseline

— BOEM-NOAA North Atlantic right whale and offshore wind strategy

Not exactly ‘save the whales from death’ stuff. Note that two of the five talks are by NOAA people, and the rest are their well-funded researchers. Regarding the so-called strategy in the last talk, I wrote about that: https://www.cfact.org/2022/12/21/ten-whale-groups-slam-atlantic-osw/. There is no strategy.

In dramatic contrast, the Save Right Whales Coalition recently sent a letter of deep concern to NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad. The Coalition has been doing its own research on harmful sonar noise, with disturbing results. Here is the beginning of their letter:

“Dear Dr. Spinrad: We are writing to alert your attention to urgent and credible information involving offshore sonar activity occurring within wind lease areas in the Atlantic. Specifically, our data show that the sonar is producing Level B harassment noise levels at distances that exceed those set by NOAA Fisheries (NMFS). Consequently, the protective distances adopted in NMFS issued Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) for offshore wind sonar work are not protective at all. Rather, marine mammals are likely getting much closer to the sonar than should be allowed. We believe this is a major factor behind the recent spate of whale deaths in the Atlantic Ocean since December 1, 2022 and the ongoing Unusual Mortality Events (UMEs) dating back to 2017-18. The only mitigation for noise is distance. The shortened Level B the IHAs have, in effect, rendered any expected mitigations useless.”

A 5-page summary of these disturbing findings follows. See 

SRWC-NOAALetter2023-09-08FINALHerunterladen

This is by no means the first time NOAA has been given technical information regarding the threat of excessive noise from offshore wind development. Such noise can easily cause deadly behavior by whales, including ship strikes, entanglements, and reproductive decline.

We shall see how NOAA responds to this serious letter of concern from the Save Right Whales Coalition. Their ongoing research is also of great interest to us, especially since the rich North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium seems to be doing little or nothing about offshore wind.

Author


David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy.

For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.

The Wind Industry’s Ignored Consequences: Whales in Peril

From Watts Up With That?


Michael Shellenberger has an article in the New York Post titled:

New documentary ‘proves’ building offshore wind farms does kill whales

He describes how the documentary titled: “Thrown To The Wind” sheds light on a disturbing correlation between the wind industry and the alarming increase in cetacean deaths.

The Government’s Stance vs. The Documentary’s Findings

“The increase in whale, dolphin, and other cetacean deaths off the East Coast of the United States since 2016 is not due to the construction of large industrial wind turbines, U.S. government officials say. Their scientists have done the research, they say, to prove that whatever is killing the whales is completely unrelated to the wind industry.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

Yet, the documentary, produced by Jonah Markowitz, suggests otherwise.

“The film documents surprisingly loud, high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones. And it shows that the wind industry’s increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

The North Atlantic Right Whale: A Species in Decline

The North Atlantic right whale, a species already on the brink, has seen its population drop from over 400 to a mere 340 in recent years.

“And, there have been more than 60 recorded whale deaths of all species on the East Coast since Dec 1, 2022, a number that increased markedly since 2016 when the wind industry started to ramp up.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

Ignoring the Warnings

Despite urgent warnings from leading conservation groups and top scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), wind projects continue to move forward.

“The waters off New York and New Jersey have seen a sudden upsurge in whale deaths this year.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

The Mechanisms of Death

The documentary highlights two primary mechanisms by which wind industry activities are harming whales.

“The first is through boat traffic in areas where there hasn’t historically been traffic. The second is through high-decibel sonar mapping that can disorient whales, separate mothers from their calves, and send them into harm’s way, either into boat traffic or poorer feeding grounds.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

The Role of Money and Influence

It’s hard to ignore the influence of money in this scenario.

“Wind energy companies and their foundations have donated nearly $4.7 million to at least three dozen major environmental organizations.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

Furthermore, attempts to shed light on the issue have faced challenges.

“Facebook went so far as to censor my post linking whale deaths to wind energy off the East Coast of the United States.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

A Call to Action

Given the evidence presented in “Thrown To The Wind,” it’s evident that the public cannot trust certain government agencies. Schellenberger writes:

it’s clear that the American people and our representatives cannot trust NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the two government agencies that, for years, have repeatedly betrayed the public’s trust in service to powerful industrial interests.https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

Conclusion

The wind industry’s impact on marine life, particularly the North Atlantic right whale, cannot be ignored. It’s time for a serious discussion of the true cost of so-called “sustainable” energy.

Read the full article at the New York Post.