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The Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is pointing blame at former President Joe Biden for a multimillion-dollar wind turbine investment with “serious deficiencies.” However, if you look at who signed off on the project, the call is coming from inside the house.
On Wednesday, Bugum announced that he was ending the Empire Wind project, an offshore wind farm that was under construction and would’ve powered more than 500,000 homes in New York. Writing on X, Burgum said he was “immediately halt[ing] all construction” because “the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
But the facts reveal that the Bureau of Energy and Ocean Management approved Empire Wind’s lease in March 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Daily Kos contacted the Department of Interior, asking for more details on why the construction was halted and why they chose to end a program started under Trump. They did not respond.
However, a spokesperson for Equinor, the Norwegian company behind Empire Wind, told Daily Kos that they were communicating directly with the Interior Department and BOEM to “understand the questions raised about the permits we have received from authorities.”
Empire Wind, situated off the coast of Long Island, officially began construction in 2024 after years of planning.
Despite Burgum’s claim that construction had “serious deficiencies,” BOEM’s trove of documents shows years of the company compiling plans to mitigate impact on avian and aquatic species, as well as how they plan to handle any other issues thrown their way.
Of course, this isn’t too surprising looking at Trump’s yearslong vendetta against wind turbines. For instance, the president has repeatedly said he fears he won’t be able to watch TV if the wind isn’t blowing hard enough. “I never understood wind,” the president said in a 2019 speech. Ironically, at the same podium, he called himself “an environmentalist.”
But three months into this self-proclaimed environmentalist’s second term, he’s made strides to drag the country further away from a greener future.
Trump signed an executive order in January pausing new offshore wind energy projects. The order provides the backbone for Burgum’s actions this week, which instructed him to review all projects’ validity.
And now that Burgum, who can’t even work in his office without ordering workers to regularly bake him cookies, has decimated more clean energy efforts, he can get back to his main goal—coal and offshore oil drilling.
In the past few weeks, the administration has approved more coal and oil leases in the U.S.
More so, the Department of Labor is even advertising job listings for people to “jump start” their careers by diving into the coal mines.
Ultimately, it all sings the same tune. Not only is Trump slashing his own programs and calling it Biden’s fault, but he also doesn’t care whom he is hurting to do it.
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