Britain has promised net zero – but it’s on track to achieve absolutely nothing

George Monbiot

Despite producing ambitious targets, governments have failed to tackle the big environmental issues over the past 15 years

‘We did the easy things first. Coal-burning power stations were replaced with gas, and some of the gas with renewables.’ Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Wed 26 May 2021

Every week governments make headline announcements about saving the planet, and every week their small print unsaves it. The latest puff by the G7 is a classic of this genre. Apparently, all seven governments have committed “to conserve or protect at least 30% of the world’s land and at least 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030”. But what does it mean? The UK, which says it secured the new agreement, claims already to have “conserved or protected” 26% of its land and 38% of its seas. In reality, it has simply drawn lines on the map, designating our sheepwrecked hills and trawler-trashed seas “protected”, when they’re nothing of the kind. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a press release.

All governments do this, but Boris Johnson’s has perfected the art. It operates on the principle of commitment inflation: as the action winds down, the pledges ramp up. Never mind that it won’t meet the targets set by the fourth and fifth carbon budgets: it now has a thrilling new target for the sixth one. Never mind that it can’t meet its old commitment of an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Instead, it has promised us “net zero” by the same date. Yes, we need more ambition, yes, the government is following official advice, but ever higher targets appear to be a substitute for action.

British banks finance 805m tonnes of CO2 production a year

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Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book called Heat. I tried to work out how far we would have to cut greenhouse gases to fulfil our international obligations fairly, and how we could do it without destroying the prosperity and peace on which success depends. The best estimates at the time suggested that if the UK were justly to discharge its responsibility for preventing climate breakdown, we would need to cut our emissions by 90% by 2030.

Researching the preface for a new edition, I wanted to discover how much progress we’ve made. An article in the journal Climate Policy uses a similar formula for global fairness. Its conclusion? If the UK were justly to discharge its responsibility for preventing climate breakdown, we would need to cut our emissions by 90% by 2030. And by 2035, it says, our emissions should reach “real zero”. In other words, in terms of the metric that really counts, we have gone nowhere. The difference is that we now have nine years in which to make the 90% cut, instead of 24.

How could this be true, given that the UK has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 49% since 1990? Surely we’ve been a global leader on climate action?

It’s partly because we now know that limiting global heating to 2C commits us to a dangerous world. In theory, governments have accepted a more stringent target of 1.5C. But it’s also because, if we ignore the impact of the pandemic, our reduction of greenhouse gases has stalled.

We did the easy things first. Coal-burning power stations were replaced with gas, and some of the gas with renewables. This makes no difference to most people: when we flick the switch, the lights still come on. But almost all the other reductions must involve us directly. They won’t happen unless the government mobilises the nation: encouraging us to drive less and use our feet, bicycles and public transport more; taxing frequent flyers; refitting our homes; reducing the amount of meat we eat; reducing the emissions embedded in the stuff we buy. On these issues, the government’s commitment to action amounts to zero. Not net zero. Absolute zero.

Road transport in the UK releases the same amount of greenhouse gases as it did in 1990: a shocking failure by successive governments. Yet Johnson intends to spend another £27bn on roads. Every major airport in the UK has plans to expand.

Trials to suck carbon dioxide from the air to start across the UK

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Buildings release more greenhouse gases than they did in 2014, and the schemes intended to green them have collapsed. The green homes grant, which the government outsourced to a private company, has been a total fiasco, meeting roughly 8% of its target. At the current rate of installation, the UK’s homes will be equipped with low-carbon heating in a mere 700 years.

When I wrote Heat, we were promised that all new homes would soon be green ones. It still hasn’t happened, and the date has been pushed back yet again, this time to 2025. Rubbish homes are still being built, which will either require a much more expensive refit or will lock in high emissions for the rest of their lives.

And no one in government wants to touch the biggest issue of all: the greenhouse gases embedded in the stuff we buy, which account for some 46% of our emissions. Government ministers urge China to cut its greenhouse gases, but our economic model depends on us buying junk we don’t need with money we don’t have. Because the fossil fuels required to produce most of it are burned overseas and don’t appear in our national accounts, the government can wash its hands of the problem.

But something has changed for the better: us. In 2006, climate campaigners beat their heads against public indifference. Now, at last, we have mass movements, and some highly effective actions, such as the successful shutdown of the McDonald’s network by Animal Rebellion last week. If there is hope, this is where it lies.

UK 

Exclusive: Labour launches ‘just transition’ climate working group

Elliot Chappell

Matthew Pennycook has launched a ‘just transition’ working group with unions, industry leaders and members of the climate movement to ensure fairness is at the heart of the party’s approach to decarbonisation, LabourList can reveal.

Commenting ahead of its first meeting today, which will be joined by Keir Starmer, Pennycook said the transition to a net-zero economy cannot be left to “the whims of the market, as was the case with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s”.

“Social justice must be at the centre of our response to the climate and environment emergency and fairness must shape our approach to the green transition here at home,” the shadow climate change minister told LabourList this morning.

“We have to actively shape the green transition so that people and places are protected throughout, its promised economic benefits realised here at home and public support sustained. This working group will help us meet that challenge.”

Labour explained the initiative’s aim is to provide a forum for dialogue with workers and trade unions, non-governmental organisations, business and industry leaders as well as communities on the process of decarbonising the economy.

Membership of the just group includes shadow ministers Pennycook and Alan Whitehead, representatives from Unite, GMB, UNISON, Prospect and Community, as well as from Green New Deal UK and the New Economics Foundation.

The group will consider the “practical, feasible, affordable and fair policy responses” required with a focus on what transition means for individual sectors such as oil and gas, steel, offshore wind, hydrogen, heat and buildings, and agriculture.

Labour has said that the body will “further develop Labour’s distinctive approach” to the transition to a net-zero economy and feed into the party’s wider policy development processes.

“Tackling the climate emergency and realising the enormous potential that transitioning to a green economy holds, is the defining challenge of the next decade,” Keir Starmer said today.

“By putting Labour values at the heart of the solutions, we can tackle the climate crisis, protect our natural environment, generate highly skilled sustainable jobs and investment in every region, as well as tackling sustained inequalities that are holding people back.

“Underpinning the drive to decarbonise our country must be both ambition and fairness. The Labour Party will ensure that is the case.”

Labour set out its plan for a drive towards a clean economy focusing on the UK manufacturing sector last November, calling for a rapid stimulus package of at least £30bn over the next 18 months with dedicated funding to low-carbon industries.

The programme is aimed at recovering jobs, retraining workers via an emergency training programme to equip those affected by Covid unemployment, and rebuilding business with the creation of a national investment bank.

The green-conscious investment bank, a policy promoted by John McDonnell when he was Shadow Chancellor, would work similarly to those in other countries and ensure that investment always supported the path to net zero.

The Conservative government sold the UK’s green investment bank in 2017, five years after it was formed, to Australian financial group Macquarie. The move was criticised at the time by activists and MPs as “deeply regrettable”.

The proposals were developed after a consultation launched in June last year invited businesses, sector associations, trade unions, workers, campaign groups and the public to submit ideas for a green new deal in the wake of Covid-19.

Then Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds told conference in September that the UK needed a “broader perspective on our environment” and that green employment is “not just about high-technology jobs in renewable energy”.

In a speech earlier this year, Starmer argued that pepole are looking for a government that “puts tackling the climate emergency at the centre of everything we do”. “That’s what I mean when I talk of a future where Britain can be the best place to grow up in and the best place to grow old in,” he added.

Below is the full list of members of the just transition working group.

Shadow climate change minister: Matthew Pennycook MP, chair
Shadow minister for energy and the green new deal: Alan Whitehead MP, vice-chair
Unite: Jim Mowatt, director of education (covering energy)
UNISON: Matt Lay, national officer (energy)
GMB: Andy Prendergast, acting national secretary
Community: Alasdair McDiarmid, operations director
Prospect: Sue Ferns, deputy general secretary
Energy UK: Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive
RenewableUK/GWEC: Rebecca Williams, head of policy and regulation
Green New Deal UK: Fatima Ibrahim, executive director
New Economics Foundation: Chaitanya Kumar, head of environment and green transition

Ransomware Moves from 'Economic Nuisance' to National Security Threat

By Masood Farivar

May 22, 2021 03:15 AM

Tanker trucks are parked near the entrance of Colonial Pipeline Company May 12, 2021, in Charlotte, N.C. The operator of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline has confirmed it paid $4.4 million to a gang of hackers.

WASHINGTON - The recent cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, the operator of the largest petroleum pipeline in the U.S., shows how internet criminals are increasingly targeting companies and organizations for ransom in what officials and experts term a growing national security threat.

These hackers penetrate victims’ computer systems with a form of malware that encrypts the files, then they demand payments to release the data. In 2013, a ransomware attack typically targeted a person’s desktop or laptop, with users paying $100 to $150 in ransom to regain access to their files, according to Michael Daniel, president and CEO of Cyber Threat Alliance.

“It was a fairly minimal affair,” said Daniel, who served as cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council under U.S. President Barack Obama, at the RSA Cybersecurity Conference this week.

In recent years, ransomware has become a big criminal enterprise. Last year, victim organizations in North America and Europe paid an average of more than $312,000 in ransom, up from $115,000 in 2019, according to a recent report by the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. The highest ransom paid doubled to $10 million last year while the highest ransom demand grew to $30 million, according to Palo Alto Networks.

“Those are some very significant amounts of money,” Daniel said. “And it’s not just individuals being targeted but things like school systems.”

Last year, some of the largest school districts in the U.S., including Clark County Public Schools in Nevada, Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia and Baltimore County Public Schools in Maryland, suffered ransomware attacks.

The attacks have continued to surge this year, as cybercriminals who once specialized in other types of online fraud have gotten into the lucrative criminal activity. According to a May 12 report by Check Point Research, ransomware attacks increased by 102% this year compared with the beginning of 2020, with health care and utilities the most common target sectors.

Last week, the southern U.S. city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, fell victim to a ransomware attack that rendered the city’s websites inaccessible after officials refused to pay a ransom.

In the span of eight years, ransomware has moved from being an “economic nuisance” to a national security threat, Daniel said.

“This is not putting just an economic burden on society but imposing a real public health and safety threat, and essentially a national security threat,” Daniel said.

Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount confirmed on Wednesday that he had authorized a ransom payment of $4.4 million on May 7 just hours after a cyberattack took the company’s computer systems offline, disrupting petroleum supplies along the East Coast of the United States.

FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2019, photo, County Sheriff Janis Mangum stands in a control room at the county jail in Jefferson, Georgia. A ransomware attack in March took down the office's computer system.

Colonial’s payment wasn’t the largest ransom paid by a single organization. Last year, Garmin, the maker of the popular fitness tracker, reportedly paid a record $10 million in ransom.

In September, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike found a ransom demand for a whopping $1.4 billion, according to Executive Vice President Adam Meyers.

While Blount, the Colonial Pipeline CEO, defended his decision to pay a ransom as “the right thing to do for the country,” law enforcement officials and cybersecurity experts say such hefty payments embolden cyber criminals to carrying out more attacks.

“Cybercriminals know they can make money with ransomware and are continuing to get bolder with their demands,” according to a recent report by Palo Alto Networks.

Moreover, researchers at cybersecurity firm Sophos warn that paying a ransom doesn’t pay off. Just 8% of organizations that pay a ransom get back all their encrypted data, according to a new Sophos report based on a global survey of 5,400 IT professionals.

Ransomware victims often pay in cryptocurrencies. A recent analysis found that ransomware victims paid a total of $406 million in cryptocurrencies last year, up 341% from the previous year.

But ransomware is not just about money, say cybersecurity experts and law enforcement officials.

“It is about mayhem,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the Munich Cyber Security Conference last month.

“When the victim is a hospital, we’re talking life and death,” Monaco said. “When the victim is a critical infrastructure, we’re talking the main avenues (for) how we power our grid, how we get our water supply, you name it.”

FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2019, file photo, signs on a bank of computers tell visitors that the machines are not working at the public library in Wilmer, Texas. Twenty-two local governments in Texas were hit by ransomware in August 2019.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department created a task force to develop strategies to combat ransomware.

“This is something we’re acutely focused on,” Monaco said.

In a report to the Biden administration last month, an industry-backed task force called for a more aggressive response to ransomware.

“It will take nothing less than our total collective effort to mitigate the ransomware scourge,” the task force wrote.

In a typical ransomware attack, hackers lock a user's or company's data, offering keys to unlock the files in exchange for a ransom.

But over the past year, hackers have adopted a new extortion tactic. Instead of simply encrypting a user's files for extortion, cyber actors "exfiltrate" data, threatening to leak or destroy it unless a ransom is paid.

Using dedicated leak sites, the hackers then release the data slowly in an effort "to increase pressure on the victim organization to pay the extortion, rather than posting all of the exfiltrated data at once."

In March, cybercriminals used this method when they encrypted a large Florida public school district’s servers and stole more than 1 terabyte of sensitive data, demanding $40 million in return.

“If this data is published you will be subject to huge court and government fines,” the Conti cybercrime gang warned a Broward County Public Schools official.

The district refused to pay.

Cybersecurity experts have a term for this tactic: double extortion. The method gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as cyber criminals used it to extort hospitals and other critical service providers.

“They’re looking to increase the cost to the victim,” Meyers said at the RSA conference.

Recent attacks show cyber criminals are upping their game. In October, hackers struck Finnish psychotherapy service Vastaamo, stealing the data of 400 employees and about 40,000 patients. The hackers not only demanded a ransom from Vastaamo but also smaller payments from individual patients.

This was the first notable case of a disturbing new trend in ransomware attacks, according to researchers at Check Point.

“It seems that even when riding the wave of success, threat groups are in constant quest for more innovative and more fruitful business models,” the researchers wrote.

 

California Community Shows Support for Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Anti-Asian Hate Predates Pandemic
By Elizabeth Lee
May 26, 2021 
FILE - Demonstrators cheer while listening to speakers during a protest against anti-Asian hate crimes at Hing Hay Park in the Chinatown-International District of Seattle, Washington, March 13, 2021.


LOS ANGELES - Some of the highest concentrations in the U.S. of Vietnamese immigrants and businesses are located in and around Southern California's "Little Saigon," 55 kilometers south of Los Angeles.

Vivian Le lives near Little Saigon. She left Vietnam in 2007 to study in the United States and now works as an accountant. Le says she has a "better life" in the U.S., but news of racist attacks against Asian Americans have made her fearful, even though the city of Westminster where Little Saigon is located has seen only one reported case so far this year of a hate crime against an Asian person, in a city where 47% of its population is Asian.

The other two hate crimes that were reported in 2021 in Westminster are anti-Hispanic and anti-Black crimes. Still, Le is afraid.

"I'm worried about my mom, my family and myself too," she said.

A study of 16 U.S. cities by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino found a 164% increase in hate crimes reported to police — from 36 cases to 95 in the first quarter of 2021 when compared with the same period in 2020. The cities with the most cases are New York and Los Angeles.

The recent rash of violence against Asian Americans prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to sign into law the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. It calls for a point person at the Department of Justice to speed up the review of hate crimes. The legislation also provides grants for training and education against racism.

FILE - President Joe Biden hands out a pen after signing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, in the East Room of the White House, May 20, 2021.

"I don't think that there's anything new with the kind of racism that's been targeted at Asian Pacific Islanders," said Tyler Diep, a former California politician and Vietnamese immigrant.

Reasons for rise in reports of racism

Diep said the difference is that the mainstream media and society in the U.S. are now finally talking about it.

"I think that with the improvement in technology and surveillance cameras, we're able to see a lot of graphic and tragic incident[s] lately happening in New York and in San Francisco, but it's not rampant," Diep said. "You get pockets of it [racist incidents] here and there. Some are widely covered. Some go on without anybody knowing."

Several incidents in which Asian Americans were attacked ended up on social media and on television. These images have emboldened some Asian Americans to report experiences that had have been kept silent for years.

"When I was a teenager, my family and I in San Jose at the time were victims to an attempted home invasion robbery," said Thien Ho, assistant chief deputy at the Sacramento County [California] District Attorney's Office. "And my parents didn't want to report it to the police because we were afraid of retaliation because they were concerned with the language barrier."

FILE - A demonstrator stands between a U.S. flag and a sign during a rally against anti-Asian hate crimes outside City Hall in Los Angeles, California, March 27, 2021.

Ho and his parents arrived in the U.S. as refugees after fleeing the Vietnamese Communist government in 1976 as boat people. Ho was 4 years old.

"My dad basically stole a uniform from a Communist officer and painted my toy gun black and wearing that uniform and with that toy gun, he was able to get us through different military checkpoints before we made it out to sea," Ho said.

He said feelings of distrust of repressive governments continue within many Asian communities in the U.S., resulting in underreporting of crimes in general.

But now, many Asian Americans are reporting incidents of racism at higher rates. Since March 2020, more than 6,600 racist incidents against Asians have been reported to the Stop AAPI Hate website in English and 11 other languages.

In the organization's May national report, it found the majority of racist incidents, 65%, were verbal harassment. Deliberate avoidance of Asian Americans was the next most prevalent behavior at 18%. Physical assaults made up more than 12% of prejudice experienced by Asian Americans. Other incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate included workplace discrimination and online harassment.

The organization says it found that 65% of the reports were made by women. Close to 44% of hate incidents were reported by Chinese Americans. The other reports were made by groups including Koreans, Filipinos and Vietnamese Americans.

"We don't know necessarily if there's been a surge. We just know it's clearly widespread," said Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University.

Hate crimes vs. hate incidents

While civil rights organizations document reports of hate incidents, not every case is a hate crime.

A person yelling a racial slur is not considered a hate crime.

"There's an argument that it is protected speech; however, just because it may be protected speech one time doesn't mean that you shouldn't report it," Ho said.

FILE - People take part in a Stop Asian Hate rally at Times Square in New York City, April 4, 2021.

Reporting a racially motivated incident, even if it is not a hate crime, is necessary, Ho said. If a person who said hateful things to Asians later punched an Asian person, prosecutors will look for a history of racially motivated behavior to determine whether an incident is a crime or a hate crime motivated by racism.

"It could be anything from what they've said to other people," explained Anne Marie Schubert, district attorney for Sacramento County. "What do they post online? Do they have a prior incident of that? That's something that we also want to look at. Is it a pattern for them?"

History repeating itself

Many Asian Americans blame the rise in racist incidents on former U.S. President Donald Trump's political rhetoric calling COVID-19 — the illness caused by the coronavirus — the "Chinese virus." The virus was first detected in China's central city of Wuhan in late 2019.

"If there is a social and political climate, such hate crimes are likely to occur," said Lening Zhang, who teaches sociology and criminal justice at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania.

Stop AAPI Hate's Jeung added, "The fear of the economic distress, the frustration over being quarantined for an entire year, all that anger and fear is now being directed towards Asians. People have to find a scapegoat. And last year the administration scapegoated Chinese people."

Jeung, a fifth generation Chinese American, said history is repeating itself. "My great-grandparents in the 19th century, they were blamed for the diseases of malaria, cholera and leprosy."

Since then, more people from Asia have immigrated to the U.S. for reasons that vary from Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees escaping war and genocide to people from China and Taiwan seeking a higher education and settling in the U.S.
  

FILE - Protesters march at a rally against Asian hate crimes past the Los Angeles Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, March 27, 2021.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese Americans are not the only targets of racist acts, in part because many people in the U.S. see Asians as a monolithic group.

"My 16-year-old niece was walking down the street recently and a man drove up in a pickup truck and asked her, 'What is your ethnicity?' She responded, 'I'm Vietnamese.' And when she said that, he mentioned to her that 'because of you and the virus, it's ruined my kids' lives,'" recounted Ho.

Two emerging trends

The reports to Stop AAPI Hate show that lower-income Asian Americans are particularly likely to be victimized by crime.

"Low-income Asian Americans often have to live in high-crime neighborhoods and therefore are susceptible to being victims, facing assault a lot more than other community groups," Jeung said.

"Asian Americans living in dangerous neighborhoods are more likely to face assault and that racism has exacerbated the crimes that we were experiencing in urban areas," Jeung said.

In a study comparing hate crimes against various minority groups, researchers found Asian Americans have a higher chance of being targeted by nonwhite offenders when compared with Hispanic and Black victims.

Zhang said about 25% of hate crimes against Asian Americans are committed by nonwhite offenders.

The perception of the other

"People are using racial lenses to perceive us and then to interact with us," Jeung said.

With racially motivated incidents making the news this year, some Asian immigrants are also examining perceptions within their own communities, where racial lenses are used to view people of other ethnicities.

"I think that no matter what, there's always going to be this underlying tension of we don't understand them. We don't like them as much because we don't understand them or somehow (they're) slightly different," said Diep.

"We can always do better in terms of making sure that we also look in, inward and look in at ourselves to make sure that we are tolerant, make sure that we are accepting of different cultures," Ho added.

"I think at the end of the day we share a lot more in common than we have differences," he said.

Asian protest in US, and solutions

Many Asian Americans have found commonality with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"They've shown how social media attention has really helped to galvanize people, have shown us how to stand up and rally," Jeung said.

Many Asian Americans said the new hate crime legislation is a good first step.

"The roots of racism include the perpetual stereotype, the perpetual foreigner stereotype that we don't belong, and so to change that narrative, we want to educate people," Jeung said. "We want to push for ethnic studies. We want to change the narrative in media. Not everything's a hate crime, but a lot of the discrimination we're facing can be protected through civil action."

But some people wonder if it will be effective in combating racism.

"I don't know if you can get rid of it (racism) because no government can really control people's thoughts and anxiety, so I think the best way to deal with this is public shaming, and we have an understanding that behavior like this one is not, should not be tolerated — to be publicly condemned, so discrimination can be contained," Diep said.

Biden Seeks to Blow Away Doubts About Wind Power  

By Steve Herman
May 25, 2021 

FILE - Power-generating Siemens 2.37 megawatt (MW) wind turbines are seen at the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility in California, May 29, 2020.


WASHINGTON - For promoters of wind energy, the change in direction expressed by the current U.S. administration is a refreshing breeze.

After four years of former President Donald Trump deriding wind turbines as “ugly, noisy and dangerous” bird-killing symbols of wrong-headed environmentalism, President Joe Biden has set a goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

Biden’s administration predicts as many as 10 million homes could receive power this way, annually eliminating 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

FILE - In this April 23, 2021, file photo, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks during a news briefing at the White House in Washington.

On Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a “breakthrough” to push northern and central California offshore wind projects.

“It's an announcement that will set the stage for the long-term development of clean energy and the growth of a brand new made-in-America industry,” said McCarthy.

“We’ve been working on this for years and years and years,” Newsom told reporters on a conference call with the government officials, calling development of offshore wind projects one of California’s “top priorities” and a “visionary opportunity” to transition away from nuclear power.

Haaland said “demand for offshore wind energy has never been greater.”

The initial areas for offshore wind development in the Pacific Ocean potentially could bring as much as 4.6 gigawatts of clean energy to the grid, enough to power 1.6 million American homes, according to McCarthy, who said “the Department of Defense is doing more than its fair share to help us fight the climate crisis.”

Because the U.S. military conducts testing, training and operations off the California coast, the Pentagon played a critical role in identifying the new areas for offshore wind development, according to officials.

“It’s our view that the world faces a grave and growing climate crisis. Climate change is both a threat to the Department of Defense's operations around the world and an existential challenge to our ability to maintain resilience here at home,” Kahl told reporters on a conference call. “The Defense Department is committed to working across the U.S. government to find creative solutions that both preserve this military readiness while also facilitating sustainable climate pathways that are essential to our national security.”

FILE - Three of Deepwater Wind's five turbines stand in the water off Block Island, R.I, the nation's first offshore wind farm, Aug. 15, 2016.

Harvesting offshore wind power

There are currently about 69,000 wind turbines in the United States, almost all of them onshore in rural areas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Wind power in the United States, with a current installed capacity of about 122 gigawatts, surpassed hydroelectric in 2019 as the main renewable source of electricity generation and is responsible for producing 8.5% of net generation in the country, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Offshore wind farms, however, are a recent innovation in North America. The first operational unit at utility scale was completed just five years ago off the coast of the state of Rhode Island. The Block Island Wind Farm is comprised of five turbines, each producing six megawatts of power.

The developers of another wind farm in that state will decrease the number of turbines from 15 to 12 at the request of coastal regulators desiring to minimize disruption to the marine environment and the fishing industry. 

The Danish company Ørsted and its partner, Eversource Energy, will instead use more powerful individual turbines, according to The Providence Journal newspaper.

Offshore units are more efficient because wind speeds tend to be faster and steadier than on land, and even small increases in speed yield large increases in energy production. But they are expensive and difficult to construct and maintain. Some environmentalists also are concerned about the effects of offshore wind farms on marine animals and other wildlife, which are not well understood.

Before and during his four-year presidency, Trump made mostly wild, unfounded claims about “windmills” harming property values and that “the noise causes cancer.” He also dismissed it as a viable alternative energy source because “if the wind doesn’t blow, you can forget about (watching) television at night.”

FILE - California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference near Big Sur, Calif., April 23, 2021.

Environmental impact

Wind farms generate most of their energy at night but, determining how to store what they produce for use during daytime peak demand remains a technical challenge. Solutions being researched include sodium-sulfur and lithium-ion batteries, as well as flywheels and underground caverns of compressed air.

“We spent the past few years getting nowhere” in terms of environmental justice, prior to the Biden administration taking office, Newsom said, explaining that the offshore turbines “would not impact diverse communities” but rather benefit them.

The projects in California, the nation’s most populous, are likely to be buffeted by some opposition in a state where residents and special interest groups have a reputation for being particularly litigious when it comes to new infrastructure projects, on or offshore.

The state plans in an unprecedented manner to fast-track its environmental review process for the new wind farms.

“We value process but not the paralysis of a process that takes years and years and years that could be done in a much more focused way,” Newsom told reporters when asked why there should not be a substantial environmental review.

Meanwhile, some who live near big wind installations on the U.S. East Coast do not like the towering turbines and have gone to court to oppose them. Residents in the state of Massachusetts filed lawsuits blaming noise and flickering light from the facilities for a variety of medical ailments, including headaches, tinnitus, insomnia and dizziness. The legal battles continue.

Fishermen in numerous coastal communities have opposed the planned offshore wind turbines, contending they would interfere with fishing routes and harm catches of commercial species.

Despite the concerns, the offshore wind industry has the potential “to create tens of thousands of family-supporting and good-paying union jobs in the clean energy economy,” Haaland told reporters on Tuesday.