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Today’s newsletter looks at the Trump administration’s latest attack on wind power development and how renewable energy advocates are responding. You can read and share the full story on BloombergFor unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe

‘It makes no sense’ 

By Mark ChediakCam Baker, and Greg Ryan

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey urged President Donald Trump to stop the government’s push to halt offshore wind developments, saying more electricity supplies are needed to help consumers struggling to pay already-high utility bills.

The federal government should be “working with states, not against states, in an effort to bring more power on board,” Healey said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News in Boston. “That’s what I really urge the Trump administration to get back to. It makes no sense.”

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey says the Trump administration’s effort to halt offshore wind developments “makes no sense.” Healey spoke with Bloomberg’s Caroline Gage.

Healey spoke hours after the Massachusetts wind industry suffered a new blow when a court filing showed that the US is working to withdraw a permit for the New England Wind 1 and 2 offshore wind projects near Nantucket. BloombergNEF estimates the total project’s valuation at $14.6 billion.

Read More:  Trump Plans to Block Iberdrola Massachusetts Wind Projects

Days earlier, the administration moved to review a permit for a separate wind farm off the state’s coast.

Since taking office in January, Trump has issued a flurry of orders designed to stymie the fledgling US offshore wind business, threatening billions of dollars of investments, hundreds of jobs and new power supplies. Healey, in a wide-ranging discussion in which she also assailed Trump’s cuts to university research and his immigration crackdown, warned that upending wind projects would worsen the financial burden on households.

Read More: Trump Channels Hatred for Wind Farms Into Strike Against Orsted

“Everyone in America is dealing with the high cost of energy,” she said, adding that more electricity is also needed to power data centers.

The Trump administration has argued that offshore wind farms are expensive, unreliable and a threat to national security. Earlier this week, Healey and other Democratic governors from the Northeast pushed back, calling on the White House “to uphold all offshore wind permits already granted and allow these projects to be constructed.”

One project that has seen some reprieve is in New York, where work on a wind farm off Long Island was allowed to resume. New York Governor Kathy Hochul brokered a deal with the Trump administration on allowances for that project after signaling she wouldn’t block other energy projects in the state, opening up a path for new natural gas pipelines.

In the interview, Healey said she’d consider any proposals for new gas pipelines sent her way. She said she supports a 10-year natural-gas contract proposal from Massachusetts utility Eversource Energy as a “near-term solve.”

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. 

Blocking the wind

8
This is how many gigawatts of power capacity — or the equivalent of eight nuclear reactors — that have been threatened or blocked by the Trump administration. That’s more than half of the 14 gigawatts of offshore wind projects approved by the Biden administration.

Troubling forecast

"I would say the economic outlook for offshore wind in the United States is not promising."
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright
Wright defended the Trump administration’s moves against the offshore wind industry, calling the renewable power source a “government-funded business.” 

At a glance

More from Green

When churning flood waters swept away a group of tourists in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in June, the whole country felt a sense of déjà vu.  

Just three years ago, extensive floods had swallowed entire hotels and families vacationing in the “Switzerland of Pakistan” and caused more than 1,700 deaths and billions in damage in other districts. Today, extreme rainfall has once again inundated swathes of the country, underscoring its status as among the world’s most climate-vulnerable.

The relentless tragedies highlight how woeful Pakistan’s disaster preparedness remains, as lofty climate funding pledges from advanced, higher-emitting countries and multilateral donor agencies fail to materialize. The shortfall is emblematic of the grim irony facing small, less-developed economies that contribute minimally to climate change but bear the brunt of its impacts. 

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. 

Flood-affected victims are evacuated from Kasur district in Punjab province on Aug. 31. Photographer: ARIF ALI/AFP

Climate change made the extreme weather conditions that fueled the wildfires in Portugal and Spain about 40 times more likely to happen and  the blazes themselves 30% more intense than if the world hadn’t warmed, research scientists said. 

India more than halved a tax rate on domestic sales of renewable-energy equipment, as part of a raft of measures to shore up local consumption and shield the economy from punitive US tariffs.

The amount of carbon emissions that the world can safely store is just a 10th of industry estimates, something that would cut warming by much less than expected, a study published in the journal Nature shows.

Worth a listen

This week, we hear from you. Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi answers questions from Zero listeners. 

Is Donald Trump a climate warrior in disguise? How do we tell if corporations are greenwashing or not? And are we about to enter a new era of collaboration when it comes to green tech?

If you have a burning question for the show that you’d like Akshat and the Bloomberg Green team to answer, send us a voice note or message to zeropod@bloomberg.net

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. 

US President Donald Trump Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP

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