The winds across Virginia on Monday were so gentle they could barely lift a flag, but the political winds were hit with a gale-force blast out of Washington.
The Trump administration ordered a “pause” to five major offshore wind projects — including the one that Dominion Energy has under construction off the coast of Virginia Beach.
(Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy).
The stated reason from the U.S. Interior Department is that these projects pose national security risks because “the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference.” However, this action comes against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s well-known hostility to wind energy in all forms, but especially offshore wind.
This “pause” is slated to last 90 days, according to Dominion. Perhaps this will all pass quickly, although given the Trump administration’s opposition to wind, there’s not much incentive for the federal government to come up with an actual resolution that allows these projects to generate power.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is 24 nautical miles off the coast (about 27 miles for us landlubbers) but has impacts across the state, even for those who aren’t Dominion customers. I live out in the woods of Botetourt County, about 15 miles or so from the West Virginia state line, where my utility is the Craig-Botetourt Electric Cooperative. However, Craig-Botetourt doesn’t generate its own power. It buys power wholesale from elsewhere, and some of that comes from Dominion. Whenever there’s a winter storm that takes down the transmission line from Dominion near Eagle Rock, my power goes out. Multiple utilities are connected through the PJM grid, so at some point, what happens to one affects the others — especially since Virginia imports more power than any other state.
The impacts of this decision, for however long it lasts, are both political and economic.
1. This highlights the growing state-federal conflicts over energy policy
The federal government under Trump and multiple states — including Virginia — are on a collision course over energy policy. This may be the first major conflict to impact Virginia.
Virginia, under the Clean Economy Act passed in 2020, mandates that the state’s two main utilities (Dominion and Appalachian Power) adopt a carbon-free power grid by 2050.
The Trump administration, though, is pushing just the opposite: It wants a carbon-fueled power grid.
The only common ground between the two is on nuclear power, which those on the right have always liked and which now even some on the left are starting to embrace as the only realistic way to go carbon-free.
Dominion’s offshore wind project predates the Clean Economy Act but helps fulfill its mandates for more solar and wind. Trump, though, has set about shutting down as much wind energy as possible and undoing the tax credits that have been behind a lot of solar growth. If Virginia pursued the power that Trump wants (coal and natural gas), it could not meet the mandates of state law. Or, flipped around, the power that Trump wants runs counter to Virginia law. Meanwhile, the demands for power keep rising.
2. Virginia is ground zero for these state-federal conflicts over energy
That was the case even before this decision; now, Virginia is even more front and center.
Virginia imports more power than any other state, a consequence of having more power-hungry data centers than anywhere else. While Virginia politicians may disagree on many things — the type of power we ought to be generating, how much we ought to be encouraging or discouraging data centers — there is broad agreement that we need more power. The power we’re currently importing from other states is both expensive and often dirty, i.e., carbon-based.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration (and the free market) is pushing artificial intelligence, which requires even more power. (It’s unclear why Trump is so pro-AI when it will eliminate many jobs likely staffed by his supporters, but that’s a different matter.) So, yes, Trump is pursuing policies that will require more power while simultaneously blocking certain types of power.
Trump’s actions shine a light (in his case, a carbon-powered light) on how there are now three general positions on energy. In the past, we’ve only been accustomed to two: Democrats pushing renewables and Republicans pushing “all of the above.” Now, with Trump, we have Republicans who reject “all of the above” and want as much carbon as they can get and as few renewables as they must accept. Where there was at least some overlap in the first two positions, there’s really no overlap between the Trump policies and what those pushing renewables want.
3. This injects more uncertainty into energy-related decisions
Eight years ago, then-West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice implored Appalachian Power to build more coal plants — Justice saw the potential for more coal jobs in his state. Appalachian Power said no, emphatically so. Appalachian’s president at the time, Chris Beam, said the company needed to look at 40-year investment horizons, and coal didn’t seem a good investment over the long term. Here’s where economics and politics don’t work well together: We elect presidents and governors for just four-year terms. The political cycle and the investment cycle don’t sync well together.
Republicans have been particularly vocal about “permitting reform.” From their point of view, it takes too long for energy projects to obtain the permits necessary to move forward, and they may not be wrong, yet here is a Republican administration holding up permits. It may have good reason to do so (more on that shortly), but the decision undermines a talking point that Republicans have been making: that once a decision is made, projects ought to move forward without delay.
What the business world craves is certainty; the political world regularly injects uncertainty. President Joe Biden thought he had laid the foundation for 400,000 or more clean energy jobs. Trump is now trying to dismantle that foundation for his preferred energy vision, even though in this case, the first turbines of the Virginia project were installed during his first term, the first wind turbines ever installed in federal waters. He is now suspending a project that his first administration agreed to. The time to have halted this project was 2020, not 2025.
As the saying used to go, this is no way to run a railroad — or the energy policy of the world’s most important country. We need consistent energy policies that aren’t going to get ripped up every time we change parties (or a president changes his mind); otherwise, how will business know what to invest in? There’s actually a partial answer to this below, but it’s not one that Trump would like, either.
This brings us to the politics of this offshore wind “pause.”
4. The two Virginia politicians most in the spotlight now are Spanberger and Kiggans — for different reasons
It’s been widely reported that Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, had lobbied the Trump administration to spare Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind when the president moved to shut down other offshore wind projects. The Dominion project seemed to be in a good place, politically. It had the support of leading Virginia Republicans. It’s owned by an American utility (the other wind projects were not), so if Coastal Virginia were shut down, ratepayers would get stuck with the stranded costs of the development thus far. The project is almost done, with completion set for 2026.
The 90-day “pause” means this decision won’t be made until Youngkin has left office and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger has taken over. If Trump allows the project to go forward as planned, Spanberger should be grateful that she won’t start off facing a crisis. If Trump shuts it down, or complicates the project in some way, then Spanberger’s life will become more difficult. She wants to make energy more affordable, and one way to do that is to produce more of it. If Trump were to shut down Virginia’s offshore wind, that would run counter to both goals — we’d have less power coming online, and ratepayers would be the ones paying for power we’re not producing.
Kiggans could be on the hook for different reasons. She already holds a vulnerable seat — even before General Assembly Democrats try to redraw districts to make her even more vulnerable. If the offshore wind project is killed, or delayed indefinitely, Democrats will use that against her. In Hampton Roads, this isn’t just a matter of what type of energy should be preferred, but jobs. The Portsmouth Economic Development Office says more than 1,500 jobs are connected to the project, directly or indirectly.
While Spanberger took a cautious approach in her initial statement on the matter, Kiggans had a more forceful response (which might reflect the different political circumstances of the two office-holders, Spanberger not yet in office, Kiggans having to fight to hold onto hers). Kiggans said she was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, which she called “disastrous.”
“This new directive will negatively affect Hampton Roads, thousands of workers, and the amount of energy that can be produced. It will also undermine military readiness,” Kiggans said. “Naval Air Station Oceana is the U.S. Navy’s East Coast master jet base and is in urgent need of a comprehensive power grid upgrade — a project connected to CVOW [Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind] that has now been halted by Dominion Energy. I will continue to fight to ensure Virginia’s offshore wind project is completed, especially since ratepayers have already paid for it. Halting CVOW at this stage is disastrous for our energy security, our local economy, and our national security as it relates to military readiness. I am anxiously awaiting answers from the administration regarding this directive.”
In political terms, I’d give each an “A” for their response. Spanberger has no need to get into a fight with Trump until she is forced to or wants to; she can afford to bide her time and see how things work out. Kiggans needs to demonstrate that she’s looking out for her constituents.
Of note: I’m grading these politicians on how well and how strategically they state their positions, not on what their positions are. I’d charitably give Interior Secretary Doug Burgum an “I” for incomplete for the reasons I’m about to get to . . .
5. This is not the first time we’ve heard these radar-related concerns, but administration alludes to undisclosed new information
A 2022 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine warned that “offshore wind farms can interfere with navigational radar used by ships and smaller vessels to avoid collisions.” In technical terms, “blade motion generates aspect-dependent, Doppler-spread interference.” In layman’s terms, the spinning turbines confuse radars.
Notably, that report did not urge the scrapping of offshore wind; it advocated for technological solutions to mitigate radar “clutter.”
What’s different now is that the Interior Department on Monday cited “recently completed classified reports.” Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, said that even though they sit on national security-related committees (Senate Intelligence for Warner, Senate Armed Services for Kaine), neither had been briefed on any new research they felt they should have been.
It’s entirely possible there is new research. However, it’s my job to be skeptical, and given the Trump administration’s clear distaste for offshore wind, some new finding that hasn’t been disclosed is certainly … convenient. Maybe these allegations shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, especially given that 2022 report, but they shouldn’t be accepted without some proof, either. We can’t expect the Pentagon, under any administration, to lay bare its secrets for all the world to see, but the fact that senators on the relevant national security committees haven’t been briefed does raise suspicions. A conservative group, the Heartland Institute, praised the administration’s decision and countered that the Obama and Biden administrations had “strong-armed the military into accepting this project.” Maybe that’s so, but the Trump administration has presented no evidence, either to the public or in private to legislators. In a joint statement with Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, Warner and Kaine said: “When a project that has met every requirement is suddenly stopped without explanation, it is fair to ask whether this decision is being driven by evidence, or by personal and political grievance.”
Here’s where the Trump administration has complicated things for itself: Trump has pursued the politics of grievance so enthusiastically that even if the Pentagon is absolutely right here, large segments of the public may not believe it.
6. If offshore wind went away, rural Virginia might pay the price
Set aside, if you can, your philosophical views on what sort of energy we ought to produce and focus on the market practicalities of what can and will be produced. Trump would like to do away with as much offshore wind as he can. The demand for power will remain, though, no matter what form of power we choose to produce. Trump would like to see that power demand filled by coal, gas and nuclear. The reality is that a lot of that demand will get filled instead by solar.
Why? For the simple reason that solar is the quickest form of energy to get up and running. Nuclear power takes years to develop; we still don’t know how long it will take to develop a much-ballyhooed new generation of small modular reactors, but we know it’s not going to be quick. There is so much demand for natural gas plants that the backlog on some key parts is now measured by as much as five to seven years. Coal plants tend to be old and often are being retired due to obsolescence. Even if we magically changed our views on coal and wanted to build new coal plants, the timeline would still be measured in years. So what kind of power can be built quickly? Solar. It may have issues of its own (the sun doesn’t always shine, and solar eats up land for either panels or battery storage), but it is much quicker to build.
The more that we demand more power quickly, the more pressure we put on rural Virginia to accept more solar farms — and the more political pressure there will be in Richmond to override local opposition and impose solar projects on rural Virginia, whether it wants them or not.
Some people in rural Virginia may think offshore wind is a bad idea, but I guarantee they’d think a solar farm next to them would be a worse one.
Want more politics and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons, even this Friday.