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US President Donald Trump swept into office earlier this year on a pledge to throttle back the US offshore wind industry, so it’s more than a little surprising to see one new project continue working its way through the federal permitting process. That would be the 2 gigawatt Maryland Offshore Wind Project. It hit a snag last week, but Maryland Governor Wes Moore and the project developer, US Wind, have both vowed to forge ahead.

Foreign Company Owns US Offshore Wind Site…So What?

The idea of establishing any new offshore wind farms in the US is somewhat remote at this time. However, US presidents come and go, while the wind will blow forever. The legal battle over the Maryland project has only just begun. By the time the dust settles over the courtroom, the all-important date of January 20, 2029 will probably come and go. A new Commander-in-Chief will take over control of the nation’s energy policy, presumably taking more productive tack than the current one.

The proposed Maryland offshore wind farm has been disparaged as a foreign-owned project under the wing of the firm US Wind, which is the Baltimore-headquartered branch of the Italian renewable energy firm Renexia SpA. However, that is not the whole story. US Wind was created through funds managed by Renexia and Apollo Global Management, a US asset management firm headquartered in New York with an office in West Des Moines as well as other offices in Mumbai, Singapore, and London.

For that matter, overseas firms have a long history of exploiting both onshore and offshore energy resources in the US, including such luminaries as the UK’s bp — of the infamous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — as well as the substantial oil and gas footprints of Norway’s Equinor and Shell of the Netherlands.

The Long & Winding Road To An Offshore Wind Project: 13 Years & Counting

The next 3-1/2 years may seem like an eternity in more ways than one. However, US Wind has been waiting more than 13 years to see the Maryland project through to fruition, so what’s another 42 months?

Apollo and Renexia established the US Wind venture in 2011, barely a year after the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management took shape. BOEM is the Interior Department office tasked with holding offshore wind lease auctions and approving leases. That seems simple enough, but before BOEM came on the scene the Interior Department had no dedicated office for managing offshore wind leases. BOEM was formed through a restructuring of the former Mineral Management Service in the Interior Department by secretarial order in 2010.

Despite some lingering kinks in the new offshore lease process, BOEM was up and running by 2014, when it awarded an 80,000 acre lease site off the coast of Maryland to US Wind. Ten years later US Wind was still wrapping up the loose ends. One key milestone occurred in September last year, when BOEM approved US Wind’s plan to develop more than 2 gigawatts’ worth of wind power at the site. In December, BOEM also approved a construction and operating plan for the project.

When Is A Final Plan Not A Final Plan?

Well, that was then. When Trump took office in January of this year, he also took a sledgehammer to the US offshore wind industry. He halted new wind leases altogether while also throwing monkey wrenches into the works of projects already under way, including Empire Wind in New York and Atlantic Shores in New Jersey.*

Nevertheless, during the ensuing months the Maryland Department of the Environment continued to send the US Wind project through its review process. The agency issued its final determination on a suite of three air quality approvals on June 5, with an effective date of June 6.

“Final determination” is not the last step in the MDE process, though. In a public notice describing the permits, MDE provided details on the appeals process.

And, that’s where things went south.

A New Hope…

In a letter dated July 7, US EPA Regional Director Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey challenged MDE’s final determination, alleging that the agency failed to provide correct information to the public regarding the appeals process.

“Failure to rectify this error could result in invalidation of the permit on appeal and confusion among relevant stakeholders with respect to where to bring such an appeal,” warned Van Blarcom-Lackey.

That sounds like an easy enough problem to resolve, but only if one assumes that EPA’s interpretation of the rules governing the appeals process is correct. That’s not a particularly safe assumption, considering the Trump administration’s solid track record of taking actions later overturned in court.

With that in mind, over the weekend a spokesperson for Governor Wes Moore told the news organization Spotlight on Maryland that the state will continue moving forward with plans to bring 2 gigawatts’ worth of clean electricity to Maryland.

“Maryland remains committed to offshore wind in the state, despite a new set of challenges presented by the current federal administration,” the spokesperson, Carter Elliott, told Spotlight in an email message (for the record, Spotlight describes itself as a collaboration between FOX45 News, WJLA in Washington, D.C., and The Baltimore Sun).

“We’re committed because offshore wind energy generation brings with it new clean energy investments and manufacturing jobs and added supply to the state’s generation base, at a time when more supply is needed to reduce prices to Maryland ratepayers,” Elliott added.

US Wind also affirmed its intention to keep the project alive. “We are confident that all of our project’s permits were validly issued,” said Nancy Sopko, US Wind’s vice president of external affairs. “We are very committed to delivering this important energy project.”

…Or Not

When Van Blarcom-Lackey pulled the plug on the Maryland Offshore Wind project, she also pulled the rug out from under 550 jobs waiting to be put in motion at US Wind’s 90-acre onshore wind hub, located at the leading global logistics center Tradepoint Atlantic. Work at the US Wind site stalled pending a final green light from the Trump administration.

Five hundred and fifty jobs is peanuts compared to the thousands of offshore wind supply chain jobs suspended or outright evaporated by Trump, but it’s still a lot of jobs.

Also at risk are jobs related to an $11 million, 10-year wind research program at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, funded by US Wind in 2022. The funds covered three different projects to be located at the offshore wind project. So, no project, no research jobs.

Aside from the hurdle placed by EPA, the Maryland project is also jeopardized by yet another executive order issued by Trump.

This one was issued on July 7 under the title, “Ending Market Distortion Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” with the intention of putting some White House muscle behind the provisions of the new tax bill passed by the Republican members of Congress earlier this month.

“The proliferation of these projects displaces affordable, reliable, dispatchable domestic energy sources, compromises our electric grid, and denigrates the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape,” the EO reads, referring to wind and solar projects targeted for punishment under the new tax bill.

“Moreover, reliance on so-called “green” subsidies threatens national security by making the United States dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries,” the EO continues.

Where to begin? Who knows! The fossil energy industry has already enjoyed a lifetime of foreign control and beauty denigration, and now they can look forward to many more years of the same.

If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread. Better yet, find your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think.

*Updates: The Empire Wind project restarted in May, but Atlantic Shores hit the skids permanently in June.

Image (cropped): The massive, 2-gigawatt Maryland Offshore Wind project is still alive and kicking, though new pitfalls have arisen (courtesy of US Wind).