The Department of the Interior has ordered the suspension of construction works at the Empire Wind offshore project in New York, saying the project may have been approved by the previous administration without an appropriate environmental assessment.
The news follows an earlier report that construction of the Empire Wind installation offshore New York had begun “quietly”. In it, Canary Media said the project leader, Equinor, had not responded to requests for comments, but multiple sources told the publication that construction at the offshore site was underway.
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“There’s a bit of hesitancy to be out in front,” Hillary Bright, executive director of Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy outlet, told Canary Media. ?“It’s about not wanting to stick their heads up and drawing more attention, potentially, from the administration, which is already giving quite a bit of attention to offshore wind.”
It seems, however, that attention has been drawn and action has followed. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to “immediately halt all construction activities on the Empire Wind Project until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
The Empire Wind project has a price tag of $5 billion, with Equinor saying in January it had secured a financing package of $3 billion. The installation was planned to power 500,000 New York homes and was expected to reach its commercial operation date in 2027. With a contracted capacity of 810 megawatts, Empire Wind 1 was going to be the first offshore wind project to connect to the New York City grid. Now, its future is in question as President Trump and his administration crack down on the technology.
Even without Trump, the offshore wind power business has been in trouble for a while now, with higher borrowing costs, more challenging supply chains, and an overcapacity that is driving down the price of wind electricity generated by wind installations.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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