The government’s gamble picking winners and losers could prove a “big, big problem” as a wind project report highlighted the risk imposed on taxpayers.
The agenda-driven administration of President Joe Biden entered the White House all too prepared to burden Americans with a bevy of Solyndra 2.0s to satisfy the climate cult. That fervor, according to a review of internal documents by Fox News Digital, included the waiver of a taxpayer safeguard that stood in the way of the Vineyard Wind project’s financial viability.
Mere days after the 800-megawatt utility-scale offshore project became the first of its kind to provide electricity to the American grid, officials from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) confirmed that the project would not have been possible if not for waivers of financial assurance for decommissioning costs.
“The more we dig into the details of the Vineyard Wind project the more concerning it becomes,” watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust director Michael Chamberlain told Fox News Digital. “The Biden administration brags that this is the first utility-scale offshore wind project. But clearly, without BOEM contorting the approval process and waiving requirements meant to protect taxpayers, Vineyard is unlikely to ever have gotten off the ground.”
“Both BOEM and the developer have admitted as much. This situation does not bode well,” he continued. “If government has to bend the rules to make these projects feasible, it’s just a matter of time before the ‘clean energy transition’ is dead in the water. The only questions may be how many taxpayer resources are put at risk and how much of the American public’s trust is squandered before it happens.”
With its initial request denied in Dec. 2017 by the Trump administration, Vineyard Wind resubmitted a waiver request in March 2021 that was readily approved that June, giving the project 15 years before the development fee would have to be paid.
“BOEM deferred this requirement for Vineyard Wind 1 with the condition that such financial assurance would be provided in full during a time when the project risk is low — that is, during the time when the offshore wind lessee has guaranteed financial support through an assured price for the electricity generated by the project,” a spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Meanwhile, little more than two years later, the Biden administration has plowed ahead with approvals for other offshore wind farms as the industry has continued to struggle financially. A report from the Daily Caller News Foundation warned in Oct. 2023 that industry experts anticipated “some sort of federal bailout may be needed to save offshore wind,” as “Inflation, supply chain backups, higher interest rates, and logistical problems have combined to threaten other East cost offshore wind developments…”
Meredith Lilley, an energy program specialist with BOEM’s Office of Renewable Energy Programs, had said in an email during consideration of the waiver, “Issuing a decision to Vineyard Wind on this request is critical to enabling them to carry on with the Vineyard Wind 1 Project because it is a key determinant of the project’s value, which Vineyard Wind needs to know now in order to secure financing and achieve financial close in early August.”
The consequence of waiving the decommissioning costs loomed large amid a lawsuit from the Rhode Island-based fishing company Seafreeze, the leader of a lawsuit against Vineyard Wind and the project’s impact on the fishing industry.
The fisheries liaison Meghan Lapp noted to Fox News Digital, “If we win, we want those turbines gone. We want them taken out. The entire time, throughout the regulatory process for all of these wind farms, the federal government keeps saying, ‘Don’t worry, there are decommissioning funds.’ Well, now come to find out there are no decommissioning funds for Vineyard Wind. If we win the case, who’s going to take them out? And that’s a big, big problem.”
“They don’t care about the impacts to fishing communities. They don’t care about the impacts to coastal communities. They don’t care about the impacts to marine mammals,” she said of the project roughly 12 miles away from Martha’s Vineyard. “Even though there’s a lot of regulation on all of these other things and all of those other spheres, offshore wind gets a pass.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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