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By Mark Chediak, Cam Baker, and Greg Ryan
Massachusetts
Governor Maura Healey urged President Donald
Trump to stop the government’s push to halt
offshore wind developments, saying more
electricity supplies are needed to help
consumers struggling to pay already-high utility
bills.
The federal
government should be “working with states, not
against states, in an effort to bring more power
on board,” Healey said Wednesday in an interview
with Bloomberg News in Boston. “That’s what I
really urge the Trump administration to get back
to. It makes no sense.”
Massachusetts
Governor Maura Healey says the Trump
administration’s effort to halt offshore wind
developments “makes no sense.” Healey spoke
with Bloomberg’s Caroline Gage.
Healey spoke hours
after the Massachusetts wind industry suffered
a new
blow when a court filing showed that the
US is working to withdraw a permit for the New
England Wind 1 and 2 offshore wind projects near
Nantucket. BloombergNEF estimates the total
project’s valuation at $14.6 billion.
Read More: Trump
Plans to Block Iberdrola Massachusetts Wind
Projects
Days earlier, the
administration moved to review a permit for
a separate wind farm off the state’s coast.
Since taking office
in January, Trump has issued a flurry of orders
designed to stymie the fledgling US offshore
wind business, threatening billions of dollars
of investments, hundreds of jobs and new power
supplies. Healey, in a wide-ranging discussion
in which she also assailed Trump’s cuts to
university research and his immigration
crackdown, warned that upending wind projects
would worsen the financial burden on households.
Read More: Trump
Channels Hatred for Wind Farms Into Strike
Against Orsted
“Everyone in
America is dealing with the high cost of
energy,” she said, adding that more electricity
is also needed to power data centers.
The Trump
administration has argued that offshore wind
farms are expensive, unreliable and a threat to
national security. Earlier this week, Healey and
other Democratic governors from the Northeast pushed
back, calling on the White House “to
uphold all offshore wind permits already granted
and allow these projects to be constructed.”
One project that
has seen some reprieve is in New York, where
work on a wind farm off Long Island was allowed
to resume. New York Governor Kathy
Hochul brokered a deal with the Trump
administration on allowances for that project
after signaling she wouldn’t block other energy
projects in the state, opening up a path for new
natural gas pipelines.
In the interview,
Healey said she’d consider any proposals for new
gas pipelines sent her way. She said she
supports a 10-year natural-gas contract proposal
from Massachusetts utility Eversource
Energy as a “near-term solve.”
Read the
full story on Bloomberg.com.
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