Virginia’s Offshore Wind Could Face Federal Headwinds
Listen carefully, Virginia. That sound you hear is hyperventilation from the headquarters of Dominion Power in Richmond after they saw Monday’s post on X from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Brass at the politically savvy energy company that provides power to 3.6 million Virginia homes were already moaning about the increased costs that MIGHT result from President Trump’s tariffs.
Now this.
Those of us who always thought this project was a massive boondoggle that would never live up to expectations, would wreak carnage on marine life and would inevitably make Virginia’s electricity some of the most expensive in the country, are torn.
On one hand we’d like the project to just go away. On the other, so much money has been literally sunk into these windmills that we need them to succeed.
It appears that Dominion’s offshore project is past the point of no return. But what happens if the feds cut funding to projects already underway? Will Virginia’s ratepayers be on the hook?
Count on it.
Seventeen states - all run by Democrats - are scurrying off to court to try to force the feds to cough up dough for their projects.
The attorneys general of the following states are part of the legal action: New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who’s running for re-election this fall, wisely chose to sit this one out.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, however, is an inexplicably enthusiastic supporter of offshore wind energy.
Several weeks ago the Trump administration halted work on a major offshore project in New York that was fully permitted. That terrified moguls in this industry.
Burgum’s latest position could put the largest offshore project at risk. That would be Dominion’s in Virginia.
At least three projects are under construction. The biggest of those is in Virginia, where Dominion Energy says it is more than halfway through construction on what could be the country’s largest offshore wind project. It’s set to have 176 turbines generating 2.6 gigawatts worth of power, or enough for 660,000 homes. The company has installed 78 monopile foundations, which are the bases of the turbines. The project is on schedule and should be producing power by the end of next year, Dominion says.
That project faces mounting legal and political risks, however. Opponents are hoping the Trump administration steps in to shut it down as it did with Empire Wind. The conservative think tank Heartland Institute and other groups filed lawsuits against Dominion and the federal government last year, saying that environmental reviews hadn’t been adequate…
If the project is stopped, it would be a major blow to Dominion. The project’s estimated construction costs are $10.7 billion. But the impact would be even wider. European company Siemens Gamesa is making the turbines, for instance. And Dominion paid for a massive ship, called the Charybdis after a sea monster from Greek mythology, to install the turbines. The Charybdis is 472 feet long and is the first large-scale U.S.-made vessel designed to install turbines. It cost $715 million to build at a shipyard in Brownsville, Texas.
On that note, what do you say we close today with something the climate crowd really hates:
It’s Billy Bob Thornton in “Landman” as Tommy Norris, an oil company executive, dropping a truth bomb on a naive environmentalist.
