Revolution Wind Stopped, Section 232 Investigation

The crew discusses the Trump administration's stoppage of
Revolution Wind and US Wind, despite billions already invested.
They analyze the Commerce Department's Section 232 national
security investigation into wind energy and new tariffs on steel
and aluminum. State governors are responding differently to federal
pressure, with Connecticut negotiating while Maryland pushes back
against the coordinated assault on offshore wind projects. Sign up
now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things
wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape
Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be
a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com
today. Now, here's your hosts. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro,
and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Well, welcome to the
Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Rosemary Barnes is in Australia. Joel
Saxo is in the great north of America of land we call Wisconsin.
And Phil Totaro is in lovely California, and as we've been talking
off air before the show started. There's a lot of news this week.
We are not going to get to all of it in this episode. There is no
chance of that. But I wanted to start off first with what's
happening off the coast of Connecticut with Revolution Wind and Ted
and the stoppage there, and also the more recent news about US
Wind, which is a project off the coast of,
of [00:01:00]Maryland and uh, the administration. A couple of
days ago decided that, uh, they're gonna pull the permits from US
Wind. And, and that has created quite a, a firestorm within the
states because if you think about revolution wind, that was gonna
power like 350,000 homes up in Connecticut and Rhode Island and US
Wind, which was nearly as far down the line, was also gonna power a
great number of homes off the coast of Maryland. Now both of those
have stopped. Uh, and as I pointed out in a recent Substack article
and on and also on LinkedIn, and I think everybody has seen this,
that pay attention to what the governors had done. 'cause this is
the same thing that happened to Empire Wind and Ecuador a couple of
months ago. Where, uh, empire Wind got shut down. The governor of
New York went to the administration and said, Hey, what's, what
gives they negotiated an out, which is that New York was gonna
allow more gas capacity and gas lines [00:02:00] into the
state. That same thing is, I think is happening in Connecticut and
the governor of Connecticut is, uh, has vowed to work with the
administration to. Get revolution back up and running. In fact,
there was a interview today, we're recording on a Wednesday where
he was on television basically saying that, that there's, uh, the
art of the deal still exists. You can't cancel a deal after the art
of the deal has been signed. Which that's a good point. Right. Uh.
Connecticut is trying to negotiate this, and they have been talking
to the state of New York, Maryland has taken a different approach
and Maryland's governors, Westmore is saying, quote, canceling a
project set to bring in $1 billion in investment, create thousands
of good paying jobs in manufacturing and generate more Maryland
made electrical supply is utterly shortsighted. All right, so
Maryland's taking a different approach and is, is sort of punching
back hard instead of going to the negotiation
table. [00:03:00] Is there more to this than what we can
see outwardly? Or is there a lot more, uh, to it in terms of what
the administration is trying to do? Or is this all about expanding
the role of gas in Democrat LED states? I  Joel
Saxum: think you're on it there, Alan. I think it's not even
Democrat led states. It's globally because it's the same rhetoric
that the administration pushed to the eu. Hey, tariffs, tariffs,
tariffs, or you're gonna accept our LNG. Um, and it was a part of
the promises made on the campaign trails as well. And, and I, this
is tough, difficult for the Uptime podcast here for me at least,
because we try to stay away from political stuff on the show. We
want to talk about innovation and technology and what's moving
forward, but this is such a. A paramount issue within the industry
right now. We have to talk about it, but I, I, I'm with you. Like,
I think it's, it's, it's just furthering the, the hydrocarbon
agenda there. Uh, drill, baby drill, these kind of things. Except
for it's, it, it [00:04:00] ignores some basic economic
principles. It's difficult. Is the US drilling more now than it was
six weeks ago, Joel? I doubt it. You know what? As we read this, I
don't know, Phil, let me get your opinion here, but as we read
this, I'm gonna look at the rig counts and see what they look like
right now in the States. Phil Totaro: Yeah. I would concur
that this is mostly about wanting to, um. Promote gas. They're,
they're trying very hard to come up with these clever ways of, of
hiding or obfuscating why they're really doing it. Um, in that
they're, they're doing this under the guise of it being a national
security concern, but. That doesn't actually really exist. Um, you
know, as I've pointed out, everybody involved, all the contractors
involved are either US European or one, you know, Australian
headquartered company. Um, it's been suggested that maybe this is
because of, uh, the Coast Guard has, you know, some, some issues
with [00:05:00] being able to, uh, conduct their
operations that frankly doesn't. Well, pardon the pun, I guess, but
that doesn't hold water. It's also been suggested that this was
potentially, uh, due to cybersecurity issues, which even if that's
true, the reality of that is that's an operational issue and has
nothing to do with the construction of a project. This time,
they're putting more of the onus on, um, you know, BOEM and the
Department of the Interior. Uh, to say, oh, well there's a national
security concern. By the way. We can't tell you what it is, but
it's very serious. So, you know, it's just a way for them to avoid
transparency and, and avoid accountability. That  Allen
Hall: same issue happened, Phil, with EOR and Empire Wind. I
think it was Politico or the Hill. Went after the order that shut
down Empire Wind to see what the details were. And basically they
got a [00:06:00] page of redacted text or they couldn't
discern anything. 27 pages of redacted text. What is the point of
that? Like if, if you're gonna be so bold to do it, then just write
down why you're doing it. And I don't know why they would redact it
unless Ecuador asked for it. I mean, there's only, there's, there's
two ways to. Have redaction happen. It's, it's pri it, it's private
information. It's commercial information. They don't want it out.
Ecuador could say, I don't want you to share that information. The
other side is the more nefarious of the two is the federal
government is unwilling to tell you why they shut the project off,
which is not what is supposed to happen. There's supposed to be
some, a little bit of visibility of why they're making the
decisions or not so much why they made a decision. What went into
the decision? Like what were the, the, the pieces of information
that let them, uh, make the final de decision to shut off Empire
Wind for a couple of weeks? Phil Totaro: And think about it
this way as well, if, if we [00:07:00] don't have, I
mean, regardless of anybody's personal politics or, you know, a
dislike for a particular form of technology or, or power
generation, you know, the reality is. Y the government of the day
has to be able to provide citizens and, you know, corporations that
operate in that, that country with guarantees. You know, this is
why I got so fired up about the whole Empire Wind thing in the
first place was because you, you, these guys have spent billions of
dollars on leases that they now are being precluded from being able
to go build. Nobody's offered to give them their money back on the
lease. They're just saying, oh, well that permit that you got
issued, that we spent either seven years or 10 years, or however
many years it was, and however many, you know, compromises had to
be made and how many decisions had to be taken. Uh, you know, at
the end of the day, the government has to be able to provide people
with certainty. And if you don't do that, [00:08:00] then
we don't have a functioning government anymore. That's scary
because then the government's out for its own interests and not the
interests of the people and who is gonna end up paying the price
for all this us as, as electricity consumers. We're gonna now end
up in a scenario where you're gonna get brownouts and rolling
blackouts and, you know, within a few years, yeah, maybe they
negotiate these deals to, to do gas. You know, off take or
whatever. And, and Connecticut's gotta put up with that, and
Maryland's gotta put up with that. But they need power. And there's
power, literally right there. The project revolution was 80%
complete corn to sted. The power's right there just take it and
they need it  Joel Saxum: now. They, they don't need it.
Five, six years down the line, when we were finally able to get
some thermal generation plants built and some transmission built
out, they need it now. And that's, that's there. So like even Alan,
like you say, is it, or like you asked, what's the rig count? What
does it look like for [00:09:00] production? Okay.
Production right now, to be honest with you, doesn't matter that
much. Where are you gonna send it? Like when you're, when you're
talking about LNG, you talk about Alan, you and I read this report
the other day, um, about they,