The Biden administration released a map Friday of a two million acre Wind Energy Area (WEA) in the Gulf of Maine that is designated for future offshore wind projects.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, said Friday that the finalized map represents a 43 percent reduction from its drafted area, and has the capacity to support 32 gigawatts of offshore wind energy — far exceeding Maine’s current offshore wind energy goal of 3 gigawatts.
[RELATED: Another Offshore Wind Project Scuttled as Maine Charges Forward with Mills’ “Roadmap”…]
Notably, the finalized WEA excludes the entirety of Lobster Management Area 1 (LMA 1), federal waters vital to Maine’s lobster industry.
“BOEM is committed to maintaining strong collaboration with the states of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire as we advance our efforts in the Gulf of Maine,” BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein said Friday.
“We remain dedicated to engaging with Tribal governments, federal and state agencies, ocean stakeholders, coastal communities, and all interested parties as we progress through our environmental review,” Klein said.
The decision to remove LMA 1 from the offshore wind development zone comes after several letters from Maine’s congressional delegation and Gov. Janet Mills that urged BOEM to take the concerns of the state’s fishing industry into account while it weighed leasing areas.
“We appreciate that the Bureau has heeded our concerns and the majority of the concerns of Maine’s fishing communities in its final designation of Wind Energy Areas for the Gulf of Maine,” Gov. Mills, U.S. Senators from Maine Susan Collins (R) and Angus King (I), and Rep. Chellie Pingree said Friday.
“This decision preserves vital fishing grounds and seeks to minimize potential environmental and ecological impacts to the Gulf of Maine,” they said. “We look forward to reviewing the final map in detail and urge the Bureau to continue to engage with Maine’s fishing industry, coastal communities, Tribal governments, and other key maritime users and stakeholders as the commercial leasing process moves forward.”
In late February, Gov. Mills announced that she had chosen Sears Island for a 100-acre offshore wind development project.
[RELATED: Mills Designates the Pristine Sears Island to be Developed For Offshore Wind..]
The choice of Sears Island for the project was met with criticism from Maine State Rep. Reagan Paul, a Republican who represents Searsport, who wrote in an op-ed for the Maine Wire that the designation will make the undeveloped island a “victim of Maine’s radical climate agenda,” and that the offshore wind port will be a “manmade ecological disaster.”
Environmental disaster.
It breaks my heart to see our once beautiful state being ruined by green energy. I encourage everyone to watch The Maine Reset on YouTube to see the destruction offshore wind turbines cause to the oceans.
Eversource Energy was involved in wind off of Massachusetts. Bailing out cost them $1.4 billion. Another Biden debacle instituted to ruin American business while laundering money.
Not only will this project run hundreds of times over budget if it even gets that far but even worse is that it will never even begin to generate even 20% of the energy it will take to build it. This is a total sewer project that billions of dollars will be flushed down and will never turn profitable or generate enough electricity to justify itself.
Shortly after the infamous “The Maine Wind Energy Act”, the ultimate device to propel Maine into “the renewable energy age”, was enacted, electricity suppliers were commanded by state law to disclose the resources that produced the retail electricity sold to residential customers.
The suppliers’ standard offer to Central Maine Power residential customers shows the following resources by percentage of load for the period between April 2008 to March 31,2009 just before the wind development onslaught:
Nuclear was 20.3%
Natural Gas was 24.2%.
Oil was 4.9%
Coal was 9.0%
Moving forward, now, well into” the renewable energy age” the disclosed resources for July 1,2022 to June 31,2023:
Nuclear = 3.8%
Natural Gas = 61.3%
Oil = 8.5%
Coal = 0.2%
The blunderers renewable energy laws have, at least, certainly killed off coal.
The Biden administration is prime example of the blind leading the inept. Every other country has found wind to be completely inefficient yet democrats continue to generate fear porn propaganda about the non-existent global warming. Here’s a prime example of wasted taxpayer dollars: https://stopthesethings.com/2024/03/19/uks-wind-industry-gets-1-billion-in-constraint-payments-for-producing-nothing-at-all/
The further out to see the windmills are, the longer the runs of very expensive hi voltage cable in salt water and the greater the kilowatts lost as energy is moved shoreward. Fishermen’s drags will foul and break these long cable runs at great expense and the breaks will take weeks, or longer, to repair.
Nothing but another crock of “sh** from our favorite leftists. They won’t give up until they destroy the oceans too.