Opponents of offshore wind in Australia and Europe lean on US groups for advice By Reuters

By Nichola Groom and Lewis Jackson

LOS ANGELES/SYDNEY (Reuters) – Bill Thompson’s fight to stop offshore wind farms was once confined to the small US state of Rhode Island, where he lives. Today, he is part of a global movement.

In April, Thompson, who is director of the activist group Green Oceans, received an email from a fellow anti-offshore wind more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away called Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter). They were seeking advice on ways to combat projects off the south-east coast of Australia. In August, he received another request, this time from the French group PIEBIEM, combat projects in Brittany.

“It’s always nice to know that other people think the same way as you,” he told Reuters.

The groups are among a dozen or more local activist organizations in the US, Europe and Australia that told Reuters they had begun sharing tactics, talking points and other resources in their joint mission to derail offshore wind – a development which he hopes will transform what he once was. a disorganized scattering of local activists into an increasingly sophisticated global network.

Several anti-offshore wind groups have said they believe governments and wind developers such as Orsted (CSE: ), Avangrid (NYSE: ) and Shell (LON: ) are minimizing environmental damage from the projects as they promote the renewable energy source as a solution to climate change.

In most cases, the groups seek advice from anti-offshore wind activists on the US East Coast, citing their years of success in slowing or scaling back major projects, eroding public support for the technology and winning over conservative politicians like former President Donald Trump , whose administration supported offshore wind power but now fiercely opposes it as the Republican presidential nominee.

Offshore wind is a growing industry in the US and a key pillar of President Joe Biden’s plan to fight climate change. However, plans to install turbines along every American coastline have been challenged by rising costs and supply chain difficulties, and have attracted several lawsuits over concerns about the industry’s impact on tourism, property values, fisheries and marine habitats.

Reuters reports reveal how global group cooperation is posing a new challenge to the industry as it allows new opposition groups to quickly profit from years of work by others. In many cases, it also helps propagate viral, politically powerful but sometimes false talking points, including that turbines are killing endangered whales and doing nothing to slow global warming.

“It’s a huge problem and I don’t think the industry has thought about A, what’s going on and B, what to do about it,” Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry think tank based in Lisbon. trade group, he said.

Opposition groups say they have only just begun.

“We would like to go further, for example with joint statements and a better media impact, to alert public opinion,” said Eric Sartori, secretary of PIEBIEM, which in French means “Preserving the environmental identity of South Brittany and of the islands against the wind offshore.

A group on the US West Coast told Reuters this month that it was launching a national anti-offshore wind organization. Other groups, including Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter), said they had discussed forming a global coalition, especially as the rest of the world tries to catch up with China, Britain and Germany, the biggest producers of offshore wind.

INCUBATED ONLINE

PIEBIEM’s Sartori said he first contacted Green Oceans and another Nantucket group after seeing images of broken wind turbine blades washing ashore in Massachusetts this summer on the social media platform X.

Sartori said Green Oceans’ Thompson helped, including providing him with a citation from a US government agency suggesting that offshore wind has no climate benefit.

That quote — “no collective global warming impact is anticipated as a result of offshore wind projects” — now appears on PIEBIEM’s website next to photos of fiberglass shards littering the Nantucket coast.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told Reuters that the quote was part of an environmental assessment of a project and that the second half of the sentence – which is not present on the PIEBIEM website – said that wind projects “can contribute beneficial to a wider mix of actions to reduce the future impact of climate change”.

BOEM routinely states in its environmental reviews that wind power will not change the course of global warming on its own, but it can help when combined with other actions.

In other groups, posts range from skepticism about whether wind turbines can survive strong winds to fears they will block ocean views. Most viral, however, is that offshore wind development threatens whales.

That claim caught fire in the US in early 2023, after several groups in New Jersey and New York blamed the industry for a series of whale deaths and drew attention from conservative media.

The claim is now echoed by opponents across the globe, including in France and Australia.

The US government says the claim has no merit and links most human-caused whale deaths to ship strikes and entanglement with fishing gear.

A clean energy trade group, the American Clean Power Association, said it is addressing opposition by working to communicate the benefits of offshore wind, such as economic growth and energy independence.

“Disinformation undermines trust, fosters confusion and divides communities at a time when we need more American energy,” said an ACP spokesman.

EXPERT SUPPORT

Green Oceans enlisted the support of Spanish marine biologist Josep Lloret, who expressed concern about the potential environmental damage of offshore wind in the Mediterranean Sea, and hosted a discussion by Texas journalist Robert Bryce, who is skeptical of the transition to renewable energy.

Other groups are withdrawing their work.

“Green Oceans … the beauty of them is that they have scientists behind them, so we can look at the papers that they say are factual and establish that they are peer-reviewed,” said Jenny Cullen, president of Australia’s Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter) .

“It wasn’t Charlie down the road who used ChatGPT to pick up the BS.”

The tactics are already helping to turn an industry that received little opposition in its early days in Europe decades ago into a political hot potato.

In New Jersey, where opposition to offshore wind is arguably stronger than in any other US state, support for the industry was 50 percent at the end of last year compared to 80 percent four years earlier, according to to a survey conducted by Stockton University.

Trump also joined the movement, promising to stop offshore wind projects if he regains the presidency in November.

His administration several years ago promoted offshore wind as part of its “America First” agenda and held a record government offshore wind auction in 2018.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

In Australia, which is a new target for offshore wind developers, the main opposition party also got behind the move and public opposition has grown – reaching 18% in September, up from 12% a year earlier, according to polls Freshwater Strategy. .

Meanwhile, in France, a Senate committee in July recommended cuts to the nation’s offshore wind target, arguing that the technology is expensive and immature. The nuclear plant already lags behind its neighbors in terms of renewable energy and has fallen behind targets set by the European Commission.

In tandem with their successes, groups opposing offshore wind have come under accusations that they are backed by right-wing interests linked to the fossil fuel industry.

A 2023 study by Brown University researchers mapped ties between US groups and conservative think tanks, including a case in which Delaware’s Caesar Rodney Institute supported a lawsuit to block the Vineyard Wind project brought by a Nantucket group, ACK4Whales .

Amy DiSibio, a board member of ACK4Whales, said her group is nonpartisan and has distanced itself from the pro-fossil fuel think tank. A New Jersey group, Protect Our Coast NJ, said the same.

“It takes away our message,” Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said in an interview.