4 ms·

Trump halts construction on nearly complete wind farm off Rhode Island

67 points by doener 1y ago

JKCalhoun 1y ago
"Revolution Wind is central to Rhode Island’s plan for a complete transition to clean energy sources by 2033…" Rhode Island sounds to me like the perfect candidate for 100% clean energy due to its size. It was a noble effort anyway.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  > ...due to its size. Isn't the problem of "currently calm and cloudy everywhere" far more likely for tiny state? Plus, being tiny makes it far easier for the lines on the map to randomly exclude fossil fuel power plants - even though you're conveniently connected to a large electrical grid, which still has plenty of those.
  - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    "currently calm" is not really a problem you have when you are next to the ocean.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    This is an offshore farm. The wind on those of way more consistent and much faster than inland. You get some seasonal variations, but no quiet days really. This is from a very different area, but you can see there's close to no 0 level downtime. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2950360424000020-gr8.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S29503604240000...
    - bell-cot 1y ago
      Point, though it doesn't take actual dead calm for the farm's output to get miserably low. Vs. if you've viewing a bigger picture, and looking at graphs of the summed extractable wind energy across multiple, well-spread sites - far better.
- midnitewarrior 1y ago
  For those unaware, Trump has been on a personal vendetta against any and all windmills since some were built (despite his legal challenge) in Scotland within view of his golf course. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-clean-energy-war-global https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-clean-... Don't expect any of this to make sense.
  - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
    It makes perfect sense. He literally asked fossil fuel interests for a billion dollars and said they'd make more than that back because of his changes. I don't know why we all have to pretend that this is some personal Quixotic quest of his rather than open corruption: > But Mr. Trump told executives they were not fighting hard enough. He also went on a rant about windmills, the attendees said. Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that wind turbines cause cancer and that offshore wind farms are “driving whales crazy.” > Mr. Trump did not request money in exchange for killing Mr. Biden’s climate regulations, the two people in the room maintained. Rather, the former president told executives that he was determined to squash what he considered anti-business policies, and that the oil industry should therefore want him to win and should raise $1 billion to ensure his success. > He told the executives that the amount of money they would save in taxes and legal expenses after he repealed regulations would more than cover a billion dollar contribution, the people said. From the New York Times
    - dibujaron 1y ago
      Heh, both figuratively and literally quixotic. He's on a quixotic quest, but he's literally fighting against windmills.
    - ryandvm 1y ago
      The problem is that it isn't corruption - at least, not legally speaking. The Citizen United decision made it possible for corporations to donate unspeakably large amounts of money to political candidates. This allows them to hand pick political candidates that will deliver the policies they want. This ultimately is the source of so many of the United States' problems. Trump actually saying it out loud sure seems corrupt because in spirit, it is. It's just that the US SCOTUS decided corruption was just fine. When you allow money in politics, politics becomes about money.
tveita 1y ago
If anyone recalls as far back as January they declared a "National Energy Emergency" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125891
- esseph 1y ago
  Which if you read the comments and article, did NOT include solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources!
- z3c0 1y ago
  Wherein the assertion was made (by exclusion) that wind and solar are not energy sources. It seems the real intention really was to cull renewables after all, though I doubt anyone is surprised.
potato3732842 1y ago
This is just another round of a fight that's been happening for over 20yr now. Offshore wind farms in the Cape Cod, Rhode Island and Long Island area have been a constant political football. Regardless of the pretext of any given action the the way things generally are is that the people who have a view they want to protect, the tourism industry and the hippie/nature/biology types are on the no-wind side and the climate types, green energy people, domestic energy and big business types are on the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes another side wins. But nobody ever gets a win streak long enough to bring anything to fruition. Everyone circle jerking about whatever the political/ideological cause of the minute is is missing the broader trend. This has nothing to do with national security, or Trump, or anything else in the past few years other than that being the pretext for whatever action was taken at this time. The area is well suited to wind power but the area but it's also chock full of rich people and moneyed interests that can afford to fight it, likely to the long term detriment of the region, but like locusts they will be gone and cashed out by then so they don't care. That's probably when these things will finally get built.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  It's not just another round of a fight. This is part of Trump's campaign to prove he's king of the US and everyone in the country has to do what he wants unless they pay him to do what they want. You need to completely reject the idea that Trump is a continuation of broad societal trends, or you're going to wake up one day to find that you're being arrested for calling him a locust.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    It's the wealthy and wealthy-ish (so like HN-tier) people of the boston-ny coastal areas who have no bigger problems than than hand wringing about some offshore windmills who are the locusts here. It just so happens that for this particular round the locusts have the head of the executive on their side. This is a long term ongoing debate that Trump basically walked into and picked the side that suited him for a few cheap political points. The battle lines were drawn long before he cared. The potential for resource (energy) extraction here is undeniable. That's why various parts of this area have been suggested for wind farms for so long. When the locusts have decimated the region and moved on and there is nobody left to fund the fight the resource extraction will happen. Because that's just the economically sensible thing to do. And without anyone to stand in the way sensible things tend to happen. In a sort of perverse "you are why the history books have the horrors they do" sort of irony, Trump is very much a continuation of the broad social trend wherein people in the US have less rights and their governments have more arbitrary power as the years go on. To ascribe the problem to a particular politician, as bad as said politician may (or may not) be is to deny that trend, which is a stupid thing to do. And just to be clear here, I am very much pro wind-farm and have been since before any of the current major political personalities were relevant.
hypeatei 1y ago
> did not specify what those security concerns are. Of course not. Just scream "national security!!" and you're allowed to do anything in this country. Trump did this with the tariffs as well. I don't understand why the U.S. wouldn't want to be a leader in renewable energy and instead let China fill that role. Is it just stupidity + aversion to change?
- gmd63 1y ago
  Market riggers using the GOP to make ridiculously stupid bets and then cashing in for outsized gains when they bend the world toward stupidity with expensive disinformation campaigns that make them actually come true. The darkest form of capitalism.
- baggachipz 1y ago
  I think it's stupidity and malice, the latter being dominant. When you consider that he receives gobs of money from the fossil fuel industry, it's pretty easy to expect the current situation.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  Renewable energy is "woke shit" to the right. Liberals like it so the right hates it and is willing to hurt themselves as long as they can hurt the left more. There's not much else to it.
ralferoo 1y ago
Two guesses: (1) Rhode Island is democratic controlled or (2) Trump will personally benefit significantly by keeping America's oil production high. FWIW, we now have quite a few off-short windfarms in the UK. Apart from the curiosity (can you count all those little specks on the horizon), they're so far from land that they make basically no noticeable difference to anyone, other than a sizeable input to the regional electricity supply. It's about the least intrusive form of energy production you can get, maybe one of the safest, among the easiest to decommission, and doesn't waste valuable real estate on land. We need more of them, not less.
HonestOp001 1y ago
[flagged]
- breakyerself 1y ago
  I feel like 90% of pro nuclear sentiment is just motivated by a desire to antagonize liberals.
  - more_corn 1y ago
    It doesn’t really antagonize liberals. It just doesn’t make sense because they cost $10B and take a decade to build. The payoff time is absurdly long for an investment of that size. I attribute the pernicious persistence of nuclear sentiment to a well funded astroturfing campaign. Nobody who has actually thought through the costs and timelines thinks it makes sense. Sure, some people are pushing for small “cheap” and quicker to construct, but those words are all relative since they’re still expensive and slow to build. I imagine in a decade we’ll know which of the new varieties were boondoggles and which made a little bit of sense. My prediction is it’ll go about fifty / fifty.
    - breakyerself 1y ago
      I don't think it antagonizes liberals, but I think they think it does. Wind and solar are already the cheapest forms of electricity in human history. Which is driving demand for low cost storage which is also on an exponential cost curve. The most logical move is to subsidize carbon free energy in whatever form it's generated and tax co2 producing energy and then let the market figure out the solution, but now days all these "conservatives" are against market based solutions and in favor of picking winners and losers if they perceive it pisses off old school environmentalists.
- ryoshoe 1y ago
  Has this administration given any indications around encouraging the development of nuclear power?
  - deleted 1y ago
sorokod 1y ago
Side effects "Shares in Ørsted plunged to a new record low on Monday after the Trump administration halted one of the Danish wind farm developer’s almost-completed projects in a move that shocked investors." FT.com
xnx 1y ago
The headline is accurate, but "blocks" is a better word than "halts".
mdf 1y ago
Europe seems to be having a rough time dealing with costly energy investments involving unstable regimes.
nobodyandproud 1y ago
I know it’s the title of the article, but I think it’d have more impact if it were written as: “Trump endangers hundreds of US manufacturing jobs, shuts down wind farm construction”. Second part, only if it fits.
samyar 1y ago
He is lobbying in favor of fossil fuel. The climate worsens year by year and we somehow manage to find ways to make it worse

67 points by doener 1y ago

"Revolution Wind is central to Rhode Island’s plan for a complete transition to clean energy sources by 2033…" Rhode Island sounds to me like the perfect candidate for 100% clean energy due to its size. It was a noble effort anyway.

bell-cot 1y ago
> ...due to its size. Isn't the problem of "currently calm and cloudy everywhere" far more likely for tiny state? Plus, being tiny makes it far easier for the lines on the map to randomly exclude fossil fuel power plants - even though you're conveniently connected to a large electrical grid, which still has plenty of those.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  "currently calm" is not really a problem you have when you are next to the ocean.
- viraptor 1y ago
  This is an offshore farm. The wind on those of way more consistent and much faster than inland. You get some seasonal variations, but no quiet days really. This is from a very different area, but you can see there's close to no 0 level downtime. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2950360424000020-gr8.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S29503604240000...
  - bell-cot 1y ago
    Point, though it doesn't take actual dead calm for the farm's output to get miserably low. Vs. if you've viewing a bigger picture, and looking at graphs of the summed extractable wind energy across multiple, well-spread sites - far better.
midnitewarrior 1y ago
For those unaware, Trump has been on a personal vendetta against any and all windmills since some were built (despite his legal challenge) in Scotland within view of his golf course. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-clean-energy-war-global https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-clean-... Don't expect any of this to make sense.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  It makes perfect sense. He literally asked fossil fuel interests for a billion dollars and said they'd make more than that back because of his changes. I don't know why we all have to pretend that this is some personal Quixotic quest of his rather than open corruption: > But Mr. Trump told executives they were not fighting hard enough. He also went on a rant about windmills, the attendees said. Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that wind turbines cause cancer and that offshore wind farms are “driving whales crazy.” > Mr. Trump did not request money in exchange for killing Mr. Biden’s climate regulations, the two people in the room maintained. Rather, the former president told executives that he was determined to squash what he considered anti-business policies, and that the oil industry should therefore want him to win and should raise $1 billion to ensure his success. > He told the executives that the amount of money they would save in taxes and legal expenses after he repealed regulations would more than cover a billion dollar contribution, the people said. From the New York Times
  - dibujaron 1y ago
    Heh, both figuratively and literally quixotic. He's on a quixotic quest, but he's literally fighting against windmills.
  - ryandvm 1y ago
    The problem is that it isn't corruption - at least, not legally speaking. The Citizen United decision made it possible for corporations to donate unspeakably large amounts of money to political candidates. This allows them to hand pick political candidates that will deliver the policies they want. This ultimately is the source of so many of the United States' problems. Trump actually saying it out loud sure seems corrupt because in spirit, it is. It's just that the US SCOTUS decided corruption was just fine. When you allow money in politics, politics becomes about money.

tveita 1y ago

If anyone recalls as far back as January they declared a "National Energy Emergency" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125891

esseph 1y ago
Which if you read the comments and article, did NOT include solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources!
z3c0 1y ago
Wherein the assertion was made (by exclusion) that wind and solar are not energy sources. It seems the real intention really was to cull renewables after all, though I doubt anyone is surprised.

potato3732842 1y ago

This is just another round of a fight that's been happening for over 20yr now. Offshore wind farms in the Cape Cod, Rhode Island and Long Island area have been a constant political football. Regardless of the pretext of any given action the the way things generally are is that the people who have a view they want to protect, the tourism industry and the hippie/nature/biology types are on the no-wind side and the climate types, green energy people, domestic energy and big business types are on the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes another side wins. But nobody ever gets a win streak long enough to bring anything to fruition. Everyone circle jerking about whatever the political/ideological cause of the minute is is missing the broader trend. This has nothing to do with national security, or Trump, or anything else in the past few years other than that being the pretext for whatever action was taken at this time. The area is well suited to wind power but the area but it's also chock full of rich people and moneyed interests that can afford to fight it, likely to the long term detriment of the region, but like locusts they will be gone and cashed out by then so they don't care. That's probably when these things will finally get built.

SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
It's not just another round of a fight. This is part of Trump's campaign to prove he's king of the US and everyone in the country has to do what he wants unless they pay him to do what they want. You need to completely reject the idea that Trump is a continuation of broad societal trends, or you're going to wake up one day to find that you're being arrested for calling him a locust.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  It's the wealthy and wealthy-ish (so like HN-tier) people of the boston-ny coastal areas who have no bigger problems than than hand wringing about some offshore windmills who are the locusts here. It just so happens that for this particular round the locusts have the head of the executive on their side. This is a long term ongoing debate that Trump basically walked into and picked the side that suited him for a few cheap political points. The battle lines were drawn long before he cared. The potential for resource (energy) extraction here is undeniable. That's why various parts of this area have been suggested for wind farms for so long. When the locusts have decimated the region and moved on and there is nobody left to fund the fight the resource extraction will happen. Because that's just the economically sensible thing to do. And without anyone to stand in the way sensible things tend to happen. In a sort of perverse "you are why the history books have the horrors they do" sort of irony, Trump is very much a continuation of the broad social trend wherein people in the US have less rights and their governments have more arbitrary power as the years go on. To ascribe the problem to a particular politician, as bad as said politician may (or may not) be is to deny that trend, which is a stupid thing to do. And just to be clear here, I am very much pro wind-farm and have been since before any of the current major political personalities were relevant.

hypeatei 1y ago

> did not specify what those security concerns are. Of course not. Just scream "national security!!" and you're allowed to do anything in this country. Trump did this with the tariffs as well. I don't understand why the U.S. wouldn't want to be a leader in renewable energy and instead let China fill that role. Is it just stupidity + aversion to change?

gmd63 1y ago
Market riggers using the GOP to make ridiculously stupid bets and then cashing in for outsized gains when they bend the world toward stupidity with expensive disinformation campaigns that make them actually come true. The darkest form of capitalism.
baggachipz 1y ago
I think it's stupidity and malice, the latter being dominant. When you consider that he receives gobs of money from the fossil fuel industry, it's pretty easy to expect the current situation.
UncleMeat 1y ago
Renewable energy is "woke shit" to the right. Liberals like it so the right hates it and is willing to hurt themselves as long as they can hurt the left more. There's not much else to it.

ralferoo 1y ago

Two guesses: (1) Rhode Island is democratic controlled or (2) Trump will personally benefit significantly by keeping America's oil production high. FWIW, we now have quite a few off-short windfarms in the UK. Apart from the curiosity (can you count all those little specks on the horizon), they're so far from land that they make basically no noticeable difference to anyone, other than a sizeable input to the regional electricity supply. It's about the least intrusive form of energy production you can get, maybe one of the safest, among the easiest to decommission, and doesn't waste valuable real estate on land. We need more of them, not less.

HonestOp001 1y ago

[flagged]

breakyerself 1y ago
I feel like 90% of pro nuclear sentiment is just motivated by a desire to antagonize liberals.
- more_corn 1y ago
  It doesn’t really antagonize liberals. It just doesn’t make sense because they cost $10B and take a decade to build. The payoff time is absurdly long for an investment of that size. I attribute the pernicious persistence of nuclear sentiment to a well funded astroturfing campaign. Nobody who has actually thought through the costs and timelines thinks it makes sense. Sure, some people are pushing for small “cheap” and quicker to construct, but those words are all relative since they’re still expensive and slow to build. I imagine in a decade we’ll know which of the new varieties were boondoggles and which made a little bit of sense. My prediction is it’ll go about fifty / fifty.
  - breakyerself 1y ago
    I don't think it antagonizes liberals, but I think they think it does. Wind and solar are already the cheapest forms of electricity in human history. Which is driving demand for low cost storage which is also on an exponential cost curve. The most logical move is to subsidize carbon free energy in whatever form it's generated and tax co2 producing energy and then let the market figure out the solution, but now days all these "conservatives" are against market based solutions and in favor of picking winners and losers if they perceive it pisses off old school environmentalists.
ryoshoe 1y ago
Has this administration given any indications around encouraging the development of nuclear power?
- deleted 1y ago

sorokod 1y ago

Side effects "Shares in Ørsted plunged to a new record low on Monday after the Trump administration halted one of the Danish wind farm developer’s almost-completed projects in a move that shocked investors." FT.com

xnx 1y ago

The headline is accurate, but "blocks" is a better word than "halts".

mdf 1y ago

Europe seems to be having a rough time dealing with costly energy investments involving unstable regimes.

nobodyandproud 1y ago

I know it’s the title of the article, but I think it’d have more impact if it were written as: “Trump endangers hundreds of US manufacturing jobs, shuts down wind farm construction”. Second part, only if it fits.

samyar 1y ago

He is lobbying in favor of fossil fuel. The climate worsens year by year and we somehow manage to find ways to make it worse