California filed a “notice of intent to sue” over the Department of the Interior’s moves to block wind power projects, two of which were planned off the central coast of California.
Wind is one of the cheaper forms of energy we have available to us, and also has the benefit of not causing pollution. Pollution from fossil fuels harms human health, causing millions of deaths and childhood asthma cases and costing trillions of dollars per year globally.
It’s also an important resource at a time when American electricity demand is increasing, leading to higher energy bills as the proliferation of data centers squeezes energy availability.
However, the Department of the Interior, the government agency responsible for usage of public lands including oceans, is currently occupied by Doug Burgum, a fossil fuel advocate who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the fossil fuel industry.
As such, Burgum has done all he can to stop cheap and clean energy projects and to try to benefit dirty and expensive fossil fuels, to the detriment of Americans’ lungs and electricity bills.
Interior has cut off 400k homes worth of power just before Christmas, tried to pause new power generation projects and halt existing constructions, and tried to make permitting harder (while fast-tracking expensive, dirty projects with “concierge” service). His party suggested drastic new fees on wind farms, far in excess of the inspection fees on dirty oil projects.
But many of those efforts have been swiftly reversed by courts due to their illegality.
This hasn’t stopped Burgum from coming up with other illegal ideas to starve Americans of the energy they need.
The latest trend has involved a pattern of bribes given to oil companies from public coffers to convince them to stop development of offshore wind and instead refocus on gas projects.
It started with a nearly-$1B bribe from taxpayer coffers to French oil giant TotalEnergies in March, basically buying out its offshore wind lease in exchange for a commitment to put that money into fossil fuel projects.
Interior made up a fake national security reason for this agreement, even though it is clear that domestic sources of power are far more secure than the kind that start intractable global conflicts. Courts have previously ruled that there are no national security concerns around wind power and Dept. of Defense had signed off on these projects.
But it didn’t stop there. Interior has continued with similar near-billion-dollar bribes, with an $885 million deal in April, and another $765 million bribe last week. It has spent a total of $2.6 billion of taxpayer funds on these efforts to make your air dirtier and raise your electricity prices.
If Interior doesn’t reverse course in 60 days, CA will sue
One of the April bribes was a $120 million payout to Golden State Wind, which had planned to install floating offshore wind turbines, a relatively newer method of building offshore wind power which is more appropriate for the West coast where ocean depths drop off much more rapidly than along the East coast. Per the agreement Golden State Wind will have to invest an equivalent amount into expensive, unreliable and dirty fossil fuel projects.
But California isn’t having it, and is pushing back.
Yesterday, California sent a “Notice of Intent to Sue” to the Department of the Interior and Golden State Wind.
“At a time when the country needs more reliable and sustainable power supply, the Trump Administration is busy using taxpayer money to strike backroom buyouts that make clean-energy projects disappear. California won’t stand idly by as the Trump Administration illegally strikes deals to kill offshore wind projects and replace them with more windfalls for his fossil fuel friends”
-Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California
The notice states that the illegal agreement between Interior and Golden State Wind violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which was passed to “enhance the energy security of the US” and which limits the government’s ability to cancel such leases.
This is the same grounds under which New York and other states sued over the first TotalEnergies deal from March. That lawsuit also states that the bribe is an inapproprirate use of the Judgment Fund, a fund set aside to pay out lawsuits against the US government. The California notice of intent makes no mention of the Judgment Fund.
California does additionally point out that the state has already put more than $100 million worth of public investment into supporting offshore wind in California, including harbor projects, research investments into floating wind support and ecosystem protection, and strategic planning costs.
That money was intended to support this project – which is part of why the OCSLA exists, so that governments can invest money with certainty that a project will happen and won’t be cancelled by the whim of an idiot who can’t legally hold office in the US.
The Notice of Intent to Sue does offer Interior a chance to correct its illegal actions within 60 days. If it continues to violate the OCSLA, California will file suit.
In addition, the California Energy Commission sent a subpoena to Invenergy last week. Invenergy is the company involved in last week’s $765 million bribe, and one of those four projects, Even Keel Wind, was also off of California’s central coast.
That subpoena could serve as precursor to a separate lawsuit, to be filed later, given Interior’s continued attacks on American energy security.
And given the legal history of the incompetents squatting in the White House, we’d give both potential lawsuits a fair chance of succeeding. But maybe that was never the intent – anyone in their right mind knows this is illegal, but it still offers as a delaying tactic, starving Americans of the energy they need just a little bit longer, poisoning them a little bit more, and allowing America’s enemies to gain some temporary advantage, just as the republican party intends.
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