By GREGORY ZELLER //
President Donald Trump’s war on alternative energy has reached Long Island’s shores – and Albany is preparing a counterattack.
Suggesting in a social media post that President Joe Biden’s administration “rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday ordered an immediate work stoppage on Empire Wind 1, the 810-megawatt wind farm under construction 15 miles south of Jones Beach Island.
Developed by Norwegian energy firm Equinor, Empire Wind 1 is the first phase of a two-part development that, along with the proposed Empire Wind 2, promises 130-plus wind turbines and 2.1 gigawatts of wind-generated electricity – enough to power more than 1 million New York homes.
All that came to a grinding halt Wednesday, when Burgum posted on X that he has directed workers to “immediately halt all construction activities … until further review of information.”
The missive deals a major blow not only to the bifurcated Empire Wind effort but to Long Island socioeconomics, which have rallied in recent years around alternative energy causes.
Donald Trump: Old King Coal.
For starters, Empire Wind 1 has emerged as a regional employment powerhouse. In addition to generating a massive and economically impactful supply chain – spurring millions of dollars in local private investments – the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, part of Burgum’s own U.S. Department of the Interior, projects that more than 2,300 jobs are being created during Empire Wind 1’s multiyear construction phase, with another 4,000-plus in the works if Empire Wind 2 comes to fruition.
Equinor has also created a $5 million Offshore Wind Ecosystem Fund to support green-energy transition among low-income New York residents and created a Small Community Grants Program offering awards up to $30,000 for New York City organizations dedicated to growing a strong and diverse offshore-wind industry, among other community-based initiatives.
All told, the Norwegian energy giant – which is also constructing New York’s first offshore-wind port in Brooklyn – has already invested more than $2 billion in the 80,000-acre offshore endeavor.
Long Island, meanwhile, has positioned itself as an epicenter of the national offshore-wind industry, with multiple projects in various stages of development – South Fork Wind, a 12-turbine farm 35 miles east of Montauk Point, is already up and running – and the National Offshore Wind Training Center preparing off- and onshore workforces in Brentwood.
A direct strike on one of New York State’s most fertile socioeconomic sectors must feel good to Trump, who enjoys tormenting blue states – this week, he denied FEMA disaster-recovery funds to Democrat-led states – and is no fan of offshore-wind energy, which threatens the fossil-fuel interests backing the president’s late 19th/early 20th century energy focus (centered primarily on “beautiful, clean coal”).
Ground forces: Equinor broke ground on its South Brooklyn Marine Terminal reconstruction project last summer.
While it also makes for great comedy, the president’s backward energy plan is environmentally ruinous – and the Empire State will not take the Empire Wind attack lying down, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul.
On Wednesday – the same day she announced a fresh $12 million investment in innovate technologies that integrate wind and solar sources into New York’s statewide electric grid – the governor fired back at the Trump Administration, vowing to defeat what she called a blatant case of “federal overreach.”
“This fully federally permitted project has already put shovels in the ground before the President’s executive orders,” Hochul said. “I will fight this every step of the way to protect union jobs, affordable energy and New York’s economic future.
“I will not allow this federal overreach to stand,” she added.
The notion that approvals for the Empire Wind project were “rushed” is a bit of mockery. Equinor’s plans have been greenlighted twice in comprehensive offshore-wind solicitation processes hosted by the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (in 2019 and 2024), while earning federal Record of Decision approval in 2023 and Construction and Operations Plan approval in 2024, both from the BOEM.
Kathy Hochul: Ready for a fight.
Empire Wind 1 has also earned a Clean Air Act permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Marine Mammal Protection Act approvals from the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
With state and federal permits in hand, well-documented economic benefits on the board and the planet’s environmental in the balance, the governor is not the only one railing against the sudden Empire Wind disruption.
Leading the outrage is the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, which issued a blistering statement Wednesday noting “years of rigorous environmental review” of Empire Wind’s plans and hundreds of millions of dollars already invested into the regional economy.
“Today’s directive is antithetical to the Trump Administration’s goal of expanding American energy production and will instead increase reliance on imported energy,” the NYOWA said in the statement. “It will also halt job creation and economic development in New York while undermining grid reliability.
“Empire Wind 1 has already created thousands of union jobs,” the alliance added. “We need more domestic energy production, not less.”
Hochul agreed that the project has proven to be a jobs-creation winner.
“Empire Wind 1 is already employing hundreds of New Yorkers, including 1,000 good-paying union jobs as part of a growing sector that has already spurred significant economic development and private investment throughout the state and beyond,” the governor noted.
And of course, the offshore-wind farm is essential to Albany’s ambitious clean-energy strategy, a roadmap leading to 70 percent of statewide electricity generated by renewable sources by 2030 and a zero-emission statewide electric grid by 2040.
The clean-energy plan’s ultimate goal, according to the governor, is to make energy “more affordable, reliable and abundant in New York” – and Empire Wind is a big part of that.
“The federal government should be supporting those efforts rather than undermining them,” the governor added. “[Empire Wind] is exactly the type of bipartisan energy solution we should be working on.”
