An army of conservative think tanks are lobbying for a stop-work order on U.S. offshore wind installations that are already under construction along the East Coast. But one of those groups is breaking rank, refusing to endorse the demise of America’s largest project off the Virginia coast.
The dissent reveals a chink in the armor of Republican opposition to wind, which has grown dramatically since President Donald Trump’s return to office.
At the heart of the disagreement is Dominion Energy’s 2.6-gigawatt project that, according to company executives, has already installed 78 of its 176 turbine foundations. Dominion, which is a state-regulated utility, has so far spent $6 billion on the endeavor.
Under a hypothetical cancellation, the residents of Virginia could potentially have to pay for that abandoned investment in the form of higher utility bills, without getting anything in return.
“The ratepayers are on the hook,” Steve Haner, a senior fellow at the Virginia-based Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, said in an interview with Canary Media. Haner called the institute among the “original opponents” of the Dominion project. The group has long collaborated with the Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025, the radical agenda to shrink the federal government that is now being implemented in Washington.
“My view is go ahead and finish it,” said Haner about Dominion’s wind project. “It’s an economic decision, not a save-the-world decision.”
Haner felt compelled to speak up about the economic fallout that would result from killing Dominion’s project after a group of GOP think tanks asked him to sign a letter petitioning Trump’s Department of the Interior to order an “immediate cession of construction” of four projects, including the one in Virginia, pending a federal review.
Haner declined to join the petition and explained why in an article posted on the Thomas Jefferson Institute’s website on Wednesday.
“Virginia needs the power. The wind project will not have a great capacity factor and may often be idle, but when running it will produce substantial electricity,” wrote Haner. “It will be far superior to solar panels. Kill it, and Virginia needs that much more power from some other new or leased generation, again at a major cost to ratepayers.”
The petition he’s pushing back on was publicly released on Tuesday. The letter urges Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “immediately revoke the letters of authorization” issued to 11 offshore wind projects during the Biden administration. The signatories claim that all of these permits “likely suffer” from weak compliance with laws meant to protect the North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species, from wind construction and operations.
The letter was signed by a half dozen conservation groups known for their far-right policy agendas, including the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute, the John Locke Foundation, and the Caesar Rodney Institute. A few anti-wind advocacy groups also signed on, including Green Oceans and REACT Alliance.
Some of the think tanks, like the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute, have ties to existing lawsuits aimed at stopping various offshore wind projects. Those complaints, filed against the federal government, contain similar claims found in Tuesday’s letter about “deficient” permitting regarding the protection of whales.
