World's worst wind NIMBY seeks to destroy wind industry using gross misinformation

Why wind farms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory

Marc Hudson, University of Sussex

When Donald Trump recently claimed, during what was supposed to be a press conference about an EU trade deal, that wind turbines were a “con job” that “drive whales loco”, kill birds and even people, he wasn’t just repeating old myths. He was tapping into a global pattern of conspiracy theories around renewable energy – particularly wind farms. (Trump calls them “windmills” – a climate denier trope.)

Like 19th century fears that telephones would spread diseases, wind farm conspiracy theories reflect deeper anxieties about change. They combine distrust of government, nostalgia for the fossil fuel era, and a resistance to confronting the complexities of the modern world.

And research shows that, once these fears are embedded in someone’s worldview, no amount of fact checking is likely to shift them.

A short history of resistance to renewables

Although we’ve known about climate change from carbon dioxide as probable and relatively imminent since at least the 1950s, early arguments for renewables tended to be seen more as a way of breaking the stranglehold of large fossil-fuel companies.

The idea that fossil companies would delay access to renewable energy was nicely illustrated in a classic episode of The Simpsons when Mr. Burns builds a tower to blot out the sun over Springfield, forcing people to buy his nuclear power.

Back in the real world, similar dynamics were at play. In 2004, Australian prime minister John Howard gathered fossil fuel CEOs help him slow the growth of renewables, under the auspices of a Low Emissions Technology Advisory Group.

Meanwhile, advocates of renewables – especially wind – often found it difficult to build public support for wind, in part because the existing power providers (mines, oil fields, nuclear) tend to be out of sight and out of mind.

Public opposition has also been fed by health scares, such as “wind turbine syndrome”. Labelled a “non-disease” and non-existent by medical experts, it continued to circulate for years.

Attorneys General Neronha and Tong sue Trump Administration over Revolution Wind stop-work order

Rhode Island is suing Trump again, this time over King Donald's decision to kill nearly completed wind farm

Steve Ahlquist

"And I said 'windmills cause cancer'"

“We’re here to announce the filing of a lawsuit against the Trump Administration here in Federal District Court in Rhode Island in connection with the administration’s abrupt shutdown of the Revolution Wind Project off the coast of Rhode Island on August 22,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha at a press conference in his Providence office. See: “This is bullshit.” Labor & political leaders oppose Trump’s Revolution Wind stop-work order

Attorneys General Neronha and William Tong of Connecticut intend to sue the Trump Administration to overturn the stop-work order issued on August 22, 2025, which halted the construction of Revolution Wind. The project is approximately 80% finished and was on track to be completed in 2026, when it would immediately begin providing a significant source of clean, renewable energy to the two states.

On August 22, 2025, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) issued a stop-work order to Revolution Wind without identifying any violation of law or imminent threat to safety. The order abstractly cites BOEM’s authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), ordering the stop so that the agency may address unidentified concerns.

“It’s really a story of numbers,” continued Attorney General Neronha, “numbers that have already been reported by all the media members in this room. We know how much energy the project’s going to generate. Clean, reliable, renewable energy of 704 megawatts, 400 for Rhode Island, 304 for Connecticut. It’ll power 350,000 homes.

“It will enhance the reliability of our grid. I thought it was extraordinary that ISO New England said what it did about how important this project is to the reliability of our energy grid when the need for energy is at its peak. That’s probably explained in some way by the fact that, because of AI, which I have mixed feelings about, and other things, our demand for energy is increasing, where it had been stable for some time.

“This project is important, beneficial, clean, renewable, and most importantly, for purposes of this lawsuit, it is a project that is 80% done.”

Located fifteen nautical miles off the coast of Rhode Island, Revolution Wind is a wind energy facility expected to deliver enough electricity to the New England grid to power 350,000 homes, or 2.5 percent of the region’s electricity supply, beginning in 2026. Revolution Wind is projected to save Connecticut and Rhode Island ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars over 20 years.

Renewables will be world’s top power source ‘by 2026’

Is the US on the wrong side of history?

Simon Evans

Renewable energy will overtake coal to become the world’s top source of electricity “by 2026 at the latest”, according to new forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The rise of renewables is being driven by extremely rapid growth in wind and solar output, which topped 4,000 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 and will pass 6,000TWh by 2026.

Wind and solar are increasingly under attack from populist politicians on the right, such as Donald Trump and Reform in the UK.

Nevertheless, they will together meet more than 90% of the increase in global electricity demand out to 2026, the IEA says, while modest growth for hydro power will add to renewables’ rise.

With nuclear and gas also reaching record highs by 2026, coal-fired generation is set to decline – driven by falls in China and the EU – meaning that power-sector emissions will decline, too.

The chart above illustrates these profound shifts in the global electricity mix – in particular, the meteoric rise of renewables, driven by wind and solar.

McKee asks to meet with Trump over Revolution Wind project still in limbo

McKee wants to use his logic and negotiating skill to convince Donald Trump to change his mind on wind power

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

I'd pay money to watch these two intellectual titans
do a UFC cage match on what used to be
the Rose Garden. - Will Collette, editor

After a dozen days in limbo, state and federal officials keep ramping up the pressure on the Trump administration to let the Revolution Wind project resume. 

The offshore wind project already under construction south of Rhode Island was put on hold on Aug. 22, leaving workers in the lurch and risking critical energy reliability and climate change mandates.

In a Wednesday letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Gov. Dan McKee outlined the consequences of the stop-work order, while asking for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

“The stop-work order undermines efforts to expand our energy supply, lower costs for families and businesses, and strengthen regional reliability,” McKee wrote to Burgum. “This action puts hundreds of well-paid blue-collar jobs at risk by halting a project that is just steps away from powering more than 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.”

Do you think McKee understands this?

More than 1,000 union workers have spent much of the last two years building the 65-turbine project, 45 of which have been installed, as well as a pair of substations that will connect the power supply to Rhode Island and Connecticut. 

The 704 megawatts of nameplate capacity was set to be delivered by mid-2026, and already baked into the long-term plans for meeting Rhode Island’s decarbonization mandates under the state’s 2021 Act on Climate law. It is also critical to regional electrical grid reliability, especially in extreme weather events where fuel supply might be limited.

Since the project was put on hold, the hits have continued, with the U.S. Department of Transportation pulling $679 million in federal infrastructure grants tied to offshore wind projects on Aug. 29, including $11.2 million for Quonset Point. Meanwhile, a separate offshore wind project Rhode Island is eyeing for additional renewable electricity, SouthCoast Wind, is facing new setbacks after federal administrators indicated in federal court filings that they want to yank already approved permits for the Massachusetts project.

McKee first spoke with Burgum on Aug. 29, with a virtual meeting among staff members for both officials earlier Wednesday, Olivia DaRocha, a spokesperson for McKee’s office, said in an email.

His request for a meeting with Trump comes a day before a federal court hearing in Massachusetts, where a group of 18 state attorneys general, including Rhode Island’s Peter Neronha, are seeking to bar the Trump administration from blocking offshore wind projects more broadly. 

U.S. labor secretary gives thanks to Cranston firefighters but takes no questions from press

Why the secret Labor Day visit?

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

The US Dept. of Labor marked Labor Day by hanging a
giant Big Brother banner from its DC headquarters

The first official visit to Rhode Island by a member of Donald Trump’s cabinet turned out to be a largely private affair. 

U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer met with Cranston firefighters at their Pontiac Avenue headquarters Thursday afternoon as part of her “America at Work” listening tour. 

The secretary’s staff and security detail drove directly into the fire department’s bay-windowed garage shortly before 1 p.m., closed the doors, then opened them once she was inside. Reporters were kept at a distance, and the secretary was kept out of sight. Firefighters then ran through demonstrations in baggy, fluorescent-colored hazmat suits as the secretary toured the station inside.

A few hours before the event, Hunter Lovell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Labor, said via email that Thursday’s visit builds on Chavez-DeRemer’s celebration earlier this year of National Apprenticeship Day, when she hosted the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) for a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on new apprenticeship standards for first responders. 

Confront or Cave? Federal Pressure Splits the Building Trades

Often conservative construction unions will have to decide what they will do

Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Keith Brower Brown for Labor Notes

Will prevailing wage be paid on ICE
concentration camp construction?

One of the last nationwide bastions of union jobs is getting jackhammered by the Trump administration. Members are languishing in ICE prisons without trial. Programs that protect members from racism and sexism are getting the axe.

In response, building trades officers are split: some are pleading, some are protesting, and others are surrendering without a fight.

Out of nine million construction workers in the U.S., one million had a union last year. Since the 1970s, when about forty percent of U.S. hardhats wore union stickers, anti-union developers have kicked unions out from most residential and private building sites.

The building trades took refuge in publicly funded construction projects and specialized industrial jobs. An old federal law that favors union hires for interstates and military outposts helps small locals of pile drivers and insulators straggle on even in rural Alabama or Wyoming, where unions are otherwise scarce.

"This is bullshit."

Labor & political leaders oppose Trump's Revolution Wind stop-work order

Steve Ahlquist

“We are here for what I call a reckless move by the current administration that will have a detrimental impact not only on Rhode Island, but on our renewable energy quest up and down the East Coast,” said Michael Sabitoni, General Secretary-Treasurer of LiUNA and President of the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council. [It will halt] “the momentum that started here almost 20 years ago with the vision and the courage to address Rhode Island’s energy needs and all the hard work that went into building an offshore wind industry from scratch, with both Republican and Democratic administrations over the last 20 years...”

Sabitoni was speaking at a press conference held in Quonset, home to Ørsted’s Regional Offshore Wind Logistics and Operations Hub and several Rhode Island-built crew transfer vessels supporting the project.

“We’ve got a massive energy project offshore that is 80% complete, employing hundreds of tradesmen and women, that we are counting on to deliver almost 700 megawatts of much-needed power to our grid,” continued Sabitoni. “This is bullshit.”

The press conference, which included political and labor leaders, as well as construction workers, was held to condemn Donald Trump’s reckless stop-work order halting construction on Revolution Wind - a multibillion dollar offshore wind development that is 80% complete (with 506 megawatts installed of the 704 megawatt system) and critical to the region’s economy and energy future. The Trump administration’s effort to abruptly halt the project threatens thousands of local jobs, jeopardizes hundreds of millions of dollars in economic investment, and would increase electricity prices and impact grid reliability across New England.

“Hardworking men and women have dedicated time, effort, and training in a very difficult environment to build this complex offshore wind project,” continued Sabitoni. “The biggest little state in the union has a saying, ‘We are small, but extremely sophisticated.’ Rhode Island is the birthplace of the offshore wind industry, and it’s going to be Rhode Island that sends a message that this is our energy future. We need to continue to provide reliable, cost-effective energy for the citizens of Rhode Island and the New England region.”

Also speaking were Governor Daniel McKee, U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Congressmen Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo, Patrick Crowley, President of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and Co-chair of Climate Jobs RI, and Rachel Miller, Chief External Relations Officer at Building Futures. Dozens of union workers and climate advocates were also in attendance.

Here’s the video: "This is bullsh*t." Labor and political leaders oppose Trump's Revolution Wind stop-work order - YouTube

How wind and solar power helps keep America’s farms alive

It's not just the Midwest

Rhode Island just awarded grants for green energy to 23 local farms including several in Charlestown, South Kingstown and Westerly

Paul Mwebaze, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Drive through the plains of Iowa or Kansas and you’ll see more than rows of corn, wheat and soybeans. You’ll also see towering wind turbines spinning above fields and solar panels shining in the sun on barns and machine sheds.

For many farmers, these are lifelines. Renewable energy provides steady income and affordable power, helping farms stay viable when crop prices fall or drought strikes.

But some of that opportunity is now at risk as the Trump administration cuts federal support for renewable energy.

‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will have Americans paying higher prices for dirtier energy

If you want to add solar panels or other green energy improvements or buy an electric car, do it quickly!

Daniel Cohan, Rice University

When congressional Republicans decided to cut some Biden-era energy subsidies to help fund their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, they could have pruned wasteful subsidies while sparing the rest. Instead, they did the reverse. Americans will pay the price with higher costs for dirtier energy.

The nearly 900-page bill that Donald Trump signed on July 4, 2025, slashes incentives for wind and solar energy, batteries, electric cars and home efficiency while expanding subsidies for fossil fuels and biofuels. That will leave Americans burning more fossil fuels despite strong public and scientific support for shifting to renewable energy.

As an environmental engineering professor who studies ways to confront climate change, I think it is important to distinguish which energy technologies could rapidly cut emissions or need a financial boost to become viable from those that are already profitable but harm the environment. Unfortunately, the Republican bill favors the latter while stifling the former.

Facts and Fiction about wind energy heard at Rhode Island's Energy Facility Siting Board

Wind NIMBYs spew Trumpish nonsense

Steve Ahlquist

Europe already gets 20% of its energy supply from
wind energy

On July 23, the Rhode Island Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB) held a public hearing on the SouthCoast Wind project at Portsmouth Middle School. The SouthCoast Wind project is in Massachusetts waters and has been approved to build the turbines, but a critical part of the project involves Rhode Island. To get the wind power from the turbines to the regional

About 20 miles of electric cables must pass through Rhode Island waters and Aquidneck Island to reach the transmission system at Brayton Point in Somerset.

Proponents and opponents of wind energy filled the middle school auditorium, and the three-member EFSB listened for over four hours. Twenty-seven people spoke in favor of the project, noting the benefits of cheaper, more environmentally safe energy and the jobs the construction of the project will bring. Twenty-six people spoke against the project, most seemingly regurgitating the talking points of fossil fuel-backed right-wing think tanks.

With so many people testifying, a comprehensive overview would be time-consuming. So instead, I chose, as best I can, a representative testimony from each side, starting with wind energy opponent and Portsmouth resident Sal Carceller:

“I’m a resident of Portsmouth. Not only am I a resident of Portsmouth, with a view of the Sakonnet River. I’m blessed where I live. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the Northeast. I’ve traveled throughout the world. I spent considerable time at McCorrie Point with my family, friends, and others. I even spend evenings there.

“I have a question for the siting board. Have you visited any sites along the Sakkonet in Portsmouth? You don’t have to answer, but I will make a suggestion. Please go to McCorrie Point so that you understand what you’re about to approve. I don’t have an opinion, but I can tell you that it doesn’t make sense. You are not crossing a river just to cross it. You’re traversing that river from its mouth to Brayton Point, the entire river, a class A, class one waterway, the only one in Rhode Island, and one of the few. It is imperative that we get this correct.

“What’s going to happen is - I’m not a scientist, I’m a statistical analyst by trade. I’ve done data science and analytics, so I look at numbers. I’m going to ask the siting board to consider this: Would you ever approve a project that you knew was destined for failure and would never be used? You don’t have to answer that, but ask yourself while sitting at McCorrie Point, and then let’s talk about where we are today.

“Why is offshore wind no longer favored under the current administration? They were voted in, whether you like it or not. I’m going to go through a couple of bullet points:

“One. Executive Order halts offshore wind expansion. In January of 2025, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order¹ that withdrew the entire outer continental shelf from the future of offshore wind leasing. Not only did he do that, he paused all new and renewable lease permits and rights of way for wind energy on federal lands and waters. Next, he’s also initiated a review of the existing leases with potential cancellation/modifications.

“Two. New federal oversight delays projects. All wind and solar projects on federal lands and waters must now receive personal approval from the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum. This change adds significant regulatory delays and uncertainty to project timelines. I’m just telling you what the lay of the land is, compared to when we first started these conversations. High costs from tariffs and subsidy rollbacks - tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, and turbine components have increased project costs. That’s going to turn into increased electric rates.

“I’m no fool. New tax legislation, signed by the President, is rolling back clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, making it financially harder for offshore wind developers.

“Now let’s talk about what has been done to the industry: industry pullbacks and writedowns. Ecuador recorded a $955 million write-down on its U.S. offshore wind portfolio. Citing administration policy changes, they’re divesting. Shell withdrew from the Atlantic Shores project off New Jersey, and this one. Projects like SouthCoast Wind have been delayed by years, losing hundreds of millions of expected value. SouthCoast wind knows it’s in trouble. They already said they are likely going to delay by four years.

“I only have a few more points—impact on the state climate goals. States like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island rely heavily on offshore wind to meet their emission targets. The targets were made under a different administration. I don’t know if the targets are right or wrong. What if we’re wrong? We’re going to ruin a river. That’s going to delay timelines, create potential energy supply gaps, and pose challenges to meet the climate mandates.

“We’ve heard that from our president’s mouth. He favors fossil fuels and nuclear over renewables. He has repeatedly criticized wind energy as visually unappealing, environmentally harmful, and economically inefficient.

Trump is killing the National Cancer Institute

World’s Premier Cancer Institute Faces Crippling Cuts and Chaos

Rachana Pradhan and Arthur Allen 

While slashing cancer research funding, Trump is
also destroying the wind power industry. Trump
claims with absolutely no evidence that wind energy
causes cancer

The Trump administration’s broadsides against scientific research have caused unprecedented upheaval at the National Cancer Institute, the storied federal government research hub that has spearheaded advances against the disease for decades.

NCI, which has long benefited from enthusiastic bipartisan support, now faces an exodus of clinicians, scientists, and other staffers — some fired, others leaving in exasperation.

After years of accelerating progress that has reduced cancer deaths by a third since the 1990s, the institute has terminated funds nationwide for research to fight the disease, expand care, and train new oncologists. “We use the word ‘drone attack’ now regularly,” one worker said of grant terminations. “It just happens from above.”

The assault could well result in a perceptible slowing of progress in the fight against cancer.

How Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will raise household energy costs

Green energy saves money AND the planet

Naveena Sadasivam

Energy policy analysts are in broad agreement about one consequence of major legislation that Republicans are currently pushing through Congress: It will raise energy prices for the average American household by hundreds of dollars, once all is said and done.

That’s because the legislation, which Donald Trump has dubbed the One Big, Beautiful Bill, will repeal the vast majority of clean energy provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which a Democrat-controlled Congress passed in 2022. That earlier law provided a wide array of financial incentives for the deployment of electricity sources like solar, wind, battery storage, and nuclear power, as well as support for consumers looking to buy zero- and low-emissions products like electric vehicles. 

Choking off support for those measures not only hobbles U.S. efforts to fight climate change — the IRA, if left intact, could single-handedly reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 40 percent — but it also means there are fewer new sources of energy for a country that has started to need more and more of it. And reduced supply coupled with increased demand means higher prices.

That’s the virtually unanimous conclusion of the academics and policy experts who have been trying to understand the likely effects of the rollback for the past few months, though each group of experts used different assumptions about the full extent of IRA repeal, given that the legislation is still being revised by the Senate. Part of the reason for this unanimity is that, once constructed, many newer energy sources like wind and solar don’t have substantial operating costs compared to traditional power plants that must be continuously supplied with fuel.

RI Republicans think the way to cut electricity bills is to curb renewable energy

To prove they are mega MAGA macho, they've dumped a symbolic package of bills to wipe out green energy

By Will Collette

Is that Mike Chippendale heading down from Foster
to his news conference? 

Not to be outdone by their lord and master Donald Trump, his hatred of “windmills” and love of coal, Republican General Assembly members led by House Minority leader Mike Chippendale just announced a collection of bills to promote fossil fuels at the expense of energy efficiency.

These bills have NO chance of passage, not just because they have no merit, but because they are being introduced at the end of the General Assembly session. Apparently Chippendale et al. are sending some symbolic message to somebody – maybe King Donald – that they are as MAGA-maniacal as anybody.

Like most energy conversations, they begin with the largely true, widely held belief that electricity bills are too high. But from there, it’s all downhill.

I live in Charlestown, one of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable communities to the effects of climate change. Storms are worse and more frequent even trashing the Charlestown Breachway. Our beaches are eroding. The sea level is rising. Seawater is infiltrating groundwater. It’s very hard to get homeowner’s insurance at any price.

Over the past 25 years, Cathy and I have taken action to increase our energy efficiency by getting an energy audit, adding insulation, putting on a light-colored steel roof and, through the much missed Solarize Charlestown program, installed an array of solar panels in 2017. We’ve also replaced our appliances with the most energy efficient available and added heat pumps.

I would love to add residential sized vertical axis wind turbines, but Charlestown’s town ordinance makes it impossible to do so (click HERE to see why). This is a legacy of the NIMBY faction of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), and I hope to see that ordinance repealed soon.

Every change we made cost money upfront but was made easier through state and federal rebates and tax credits and, in the case of our solar panels, being able to sell our excess power back into the grid. Every energy investment we have made has paid us back through lower electricity usage.

Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans want to end all of that and now we’ve heard from state Republicans that they want to do the same here in Rhode Island.

Chippendale said, “Far too often, the utility is painted as the villain, but many of these cost increases stem from legislative mandates — laws passed by the General Assembly that forced utilities to buy expensive energy or fund inefficient programs…”

He condemned the payback solar panel owners like us get for selling our excess energy: “Right now, solar customers are credited at the full retail rate for energy. They produce up to 125% of their usage. That’s not market-based. It’s an inflated rate that gets passed on to every single ratepayer in this state.”

WTF? “Full retail rate” isn’t “market-based?” As it is, the number of solar panels you can install has to roughly match your usage. Personally, I would have wanted to add more since the marginal increased cost would have meant more generated power. That’s market-based, Mike. And like the energy companies, the utility pays us at the rate called for by law.

The other market-based reality ignored by the MAGA world is the rapid expansion of green energy generation and how through the economies of scale, green energy prices have been consistently dropping. 

All across Red State Middle America, wind and solar power companies have been booming, generating employment booms as well as energy at levels that now surpass fossil fuels. Trying to reverse this market trend makes no economic sense. As Mike would say, not “market-based.”

Even Charlestown’s ex-state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi is on board with this regressive approach to energy, shown in this tweet on X (note: Trump is pictured with coal miners, not natural gas drillers):

I do not understand the MAGA obsession with wasting energy. Or hating energy efficiency. Or leaning into increased use of polluting fuels. Who benefits other than the fossil fuel companies?

Is it just about “owning the libs?”

Ever since Jimmy Carter’s sweater and the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, most Americans have come to believe we need to be smarter about energy. Energy efficiency is an unqualified good thing regardless of your location on the political spectrum. Burning less fossil fuels is an unqualified good thing.

We’ve come a long way in 50 years and we still have quite a distance to go. Why Chippendale and MAGA-world want to turn the clock back is baffling and unjustified.

Can a local fishing panel make a difference in offshore wind projects?

We’re about to find out.

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

When the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) put out a public call for volunteers to revive a state fishing advisory panel, a former panel member warned Jim Riggs against joining.

Riggs, a 75-year-old recreational fisherman and retired electrician who lives in Westerly, applied anyway.

“I feel that in order to have your voice heard when it comes to fisheries management, you’re either on the table or on the plate,” Riggs said in an interview. “I prefer to be at the table.”

His seat at the table is now secured; he is one of nine new members the CRMC named to its Fishermen’s Advisory Board (FAB) after a single, unanimous vote on April 8. The advisory panel has been inactive since all of its former members resigned together in August 2023 to protest what they viewed as the CRMC’s kowtowing to offshore wind project developers at the expense of local fishermen. 

Will the same frustrations bubble up? The first test comes this week, as the new panel begins negotiations with SouthCoast Wind, which has applied for a permit to run transmission lines from its wind turbines up the Sakonnet River and out Mount Hope Bay. 

Rhode Islanders support raising the minimum wage, offshore wind, and unions

RI AFL-CIO releases new polling data 

The Rhode Island AFL-CIO released the results of a public opinion poll conducted by Fleming and Associates of Cumberland, Rhode Island. The poll, conducted in early February, surveyed 400 registered voters in Rhode Island and had a plus/minus ratio of 4.9%. It showed strong support among registered voters for the Rhode Island labor movement and the issues organized labor advocates for.

“The results of this poll demonstrate strong support for organized labor and the issues our members advocate for,” said Rhode Island AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley. “Rhode Island is a labor state, and our unions fight every day to improve the lives of working women and men, regardless of whether they are in a union or not yet union members. We will continue to organize for laws and policies that protect workers and enhance their quality of life in the Ocean State.”

Among the findings are:

• Only 29% of voters feel the State of Rhode Island is moving in the right direction, versus 48% who think it is moving in the wrong direction.
• 81% of Rhode Island voters agree that labor unions are necessary to protect the working person.
• 74% of Rhode Island voters believe that Unions serve an important purpose by helping working people.
• 56% of Rhode Island voters have a favorable opinion of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO.

On the issues organized labor advocates for in Rhode Island:

• 82% of Rhode Island voters believe we should protect “time and a half pay” on Sundays and Holidays.
• 70% of Rhode Island voters support increasing the minimum wage by $1 per year for the next 5 years, raising the rate to $20 per hour by 2030.
• 69% of voters support banning smoking in Rhode Island’s two casinos.
• 64% of Rhode Island voters support banning the sale and manufacture of military assault-style weapons in Rhode Island.
• 70% of voters prefer that new charter schools be approved by voters in their city and town rather than the Board of Education or local school committees.
• 59% of voters support offshore wind power development along Rhode Island’s coast.
• 54% of voters support allowing people to register and vote on the same day as an election.
• 55% of voters think limiting payday loan interest to a 28% annual interest rate is important.

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Wild Fire Conspiracies Burn Down Natural World and Public Health

Who knew fire was “woke?”

By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist

Which of these concepts bother you - and why?

A few days before I left for vacation last month a longtime ecoRI News reader sent me a link to a story with the headline “Woke DEI + Green Nihilism = Dresden in California.” The 2,444 words that followed were worse. I lugged it around for 10 days.

In the email that introduced me to the story and the website that hosts it — a MAGA wet dream called American Greatness — the anti-wind Rhode Islander wrote, “Some good commentary on what has been behind it all.”

Among the reasons, according to the article, for why the Los Angeles County wildfire tragedy occurred were:

A “woke socialist state.”

“The Los Angeles apocalypse was a multisystem, green-woke collapse — and a disastrous reminder that when Soviet-style, anti-meritocratic ideology permeates all aspects of modern life in California, disaster is inevitable.”

“The California nihilist green ethos and the left-wing politicians who run the madhouse ensured there is no effort to glean the forests and hills of combustible fuel.”

“There is not enough water for hydrants, not enough to deliver to Los Angeles, and when it arrives, there is too much incompetence to know how to use it.”

Climate change isn’t to blame, the author wrote, because it is an excuse “for arrogant incompetency and disdain for the public. And it is not racism or homophobia to fault those who paraded and virtue signaled their tribal identities so extraneous to their actual responsibilities for public safety.”

It happened, he wrote, because the “left holds supermajorities in both houses” of the California Legislature. It happened because there isn’t a single Republican on the 15-member Los Angeles City Council. (There are 88 cities, including Beverly Hills, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, and Malibu, in Los Angeles County, and each has a mayor and a city council.)

Trump’s offshore wind energy freeze: What states lose if the executive order remains in place

Good bye, green energy jobs

Barbara Kates-Garnick, Tufts University

The U.S. Northeast and Northern California have the nation’s strongest offshore winds. NREL

A single wind turbine spinning off the U.S. Northeast coast today can power thousands of homes – without the pollution that comes from fossil fuel power plants. A dozen of those turbines together can produce enough electricity for an entire community.

The opportunity to tap into such a powerful source of locally produced clean energy – and the jobs and economic growth that come with it – is why states from Maine to Virginia have invested in building a U.S. offshore wind industry.

But much of that progress may now be at a standstill.

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president in January 2025 was to order a freeze on both leasing federal areas for new offshore wind projects and issuing federal permits for projects that are in progress.

The order and Trump’s long-held antipathy toward wind power are creating massive uncertainty for a renewable energy industry at its nascent stage of development in the U.S., and ceding leadership and offshore wind technology to Europe and China.

As a professor of energy policy and former undersecretary of energy for Massachusetts, I’ve seen the potential for offshore wind power, and what the Northeast states, as well as the U.S. wind industry, stand to lose if that growth is shut down for the next four years.

New England Offshore Wind Projects Likely to Survive Trump Order

Maybe

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Trump's hatred of wind power goes back to his
losing fight to stop Scotland from building turbines
offshore from his golf course.

Offshore wind projects already underway are expected to survive in New England, for now.

Newly inaugurated Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at curtailing the development of offshore and onshore wind in the United States. The order revokes the offshore wind leases in the Outer Continental Shelf — the area of the ocean in which many wind projects are in development — until further notice, and prohibits consideration of any new offshore wind projects.

During the campaign, Trump was hostile to renewable energy sources, pledging to end the offshore wind industry upon his return to the White House and boost the nation’s fossil fuel production.

But the order is expected to have limited impact for most of the wind projects in the New England region. Many of the projects have already received final approvals from the federal government prior to Trump taking office, with SouthCoast Wind securing federal permits less than a week before the transition.

SouthCoast Wind was also awarded a multistate procurement from Massachusetts and Rhode Island to deliver 1,287 megawatts (MW) of power by 2030, with construction expected to start sometime this year, according to the project website.

Are particle emissions from offshore wind farms harmful for blue mussels?

Mussels grow around off-shore wind farm footings 

Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research

Mussel growth on and around the base
of the Block Island Wind Farm

After several years of service under harsh weather conditions, the rotor blades of offshore wind parks are subjected to degradation and surface erosion, releasing sizeable quantities of particle emissions into the environment. 

A team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now investigated the effects of these particle on blue mussels – a species also being considered for the multi-use of wind parks for aquaculture. 

In the experiment, the mussels absorbed metals from the rotor blades’ coatings, as the team describes in a study just released in the journal Science of the Total Environment, where they also discuss the potential physiological effects.

In a laboratory-based pilot study, a team of researchers explored the potential effects of rotor blade emissions on the physiology of blue mussels. To do so, the material from these rotor blades was ground to a particle size small enough for the mussels to ingest. 

Federal hostility could delay offshore wind projects, derailing state climate goals

Among the many things Trump hates, wind energy is high on the list

By Alex Brown, Rhode Island Current

He really hates "windmills"

Numerous East Coast states are counting on offshore wind projects to power tens of millions of homes and to help them transition to cleaner energy.

But putting wind turbines at sea requires the cooperation of a powerful landlord: the federal government. Soon, that government will be led by Donald Trump, who has frequently disparaged offshore wind and said he will “make sure that ends on Day 1.”

In the eight states that have passed legal mandates to reach certain amounts of offshore wind power, Trump’s second term threatens those timelines.

“This is absolutely going to create problems for how we’re going to meet our emissions goals and the energy needs for the state,” said Massachusetts state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Democrat who serves as vice chair on the legislative Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources.

For many East Coast states that lack a large land base for extensive onshore development, offshore wind in federal ocean waters is central to their plans for a power supply that doesn’t use fossil fuels. 

Lawmakers in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia have established mandates requiring their states to produce certain amounts of offshore wind power in the coming years. 

Other states have passed laws to allow for offshore wind to be added to their grids or set nonbinding planning targets to prepare for the industry’s development.

State leaders say they will continue to pursue offshore wind but realize there may be delays during the next four years.

In the meantime, some say they will continue to build out the needed electrical grid and ports to get ready for turbines, in hopes of speeding up offshore wind once Trump’s term ends. Others say they may need to consider building more onshore energy projects, including wind and solar, in the next few years to meet near-term climate goals.