Among his many actions on Monday in his first day as U.S. president, Donald Trump ordered a “temporary withdrawal” of any new federal leasing of the Outer Continental Shelf for new offshore wind projects.
As Reuters reported, Trump “suspended new federal offshore wind leasing pending an environmental and economic review, saying windmills are ugly, expensive and harm wildlife. ‘We're not going to do the wind thing. Big, ugly windmills. They ruin your neighborhood,’ he said. Without providing evidence, he said offshore wind projects were behind an increase in whale deaths off the U.S. East Coast in recent years.”
New York State and other states have embraced offshore wind. As its governor, Kathy Hochul, declared in her “State of the State” address a week earlier, “We recommitted to reducing carbon emissions with offshore wind off the coast of Long Island.”