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Oh the irony, it burns. Former President Trump continually hammered on wind vitality as he coasted to victory as a candidate for the Oval Workplace in 2016. He continued pounding away throughout his shedding bid for a second time period in 2020. Now right here we’re in 2024, the US wind trade is firing on all cylinders and Trump continues to be blowing sizzling air, properly, not simply sizzling air…ewwwww…ick…
Trump Blows Scorching Air, Wind Power Wins
To be clear, Trump has not solely dropped his assaults on wind vitality. Nonetheless, within the waning days of the marketing campaign he has put wind generators apart to assault girls in a collection of weird, lethargic fantasies about alternately between defending girls “whether or not they prefer it or not,” and setting a nine-barrel firing squad upon a distinguished feminine rival.
Miming a female-focused intercourse act on stage can be a subsequent logical step for such a candidate, and Trump didn’t disappoint. He went there on Friday evening, in a extensively reported efficiency throughout a rally in Milwaukee.
“Trump, in certainly one of his remaining rallies on Friday evening, simulated sexually stroking after which performing oral intercourse on his malfunctioning microphone in Milwaukee,” reported Kevin Manahan for NJ Advance Media at NJ.com.
The bodily act apparently triggered a linguistic torrent as properly. Manahan famous that Trump adopted up his graphic illustration of a blow job by exclaiming, “I’m working my ass off with this silly mic. I’m blowing out my left arm. Now I’m going to blow out my proper arm and I’m blowing out my rattling throat, too.”
Ouch! For all that blowing, Trump’s longstanding opposition to wind vitality within the US has gone for naught. Exhibit A is a large 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind vitality mission underneath method off the coast of Virginia underneath the wing of Dominion Power.
On November 1 — the identical day Trump selected to reveal his enthusiasm for blowing — Dominion reported that its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind mission is on observe and on funds for completion in 2026. The corporate met its purpose of laying 78 monopile foundations for the brand new wind generators this yr, topping its preliminary purpose of 70. After the winter storm season passes, Dominion expects work to renew in 2025 in direction of the whole whole of 176 wind generators (see extra offshore wind background right here).
Extra Successful For Wind Power In The USA
Talking of the left hand not figuring out what the best hand is doing, Trump’s expertise with offshore wind generators might have influenced his resolution to make them a frequent goal of assault throughout his 2016 marketing campaign. Nonetheless, after he gained workplace the US Division of the Inside continued to grease the wheels for an offshore wind vitality revolution within the US underneath his very nostril.
Previous to Trump’s time period in workplace, the federal authorities had no working construction for approving offshore wind leases in US waters. The nation’s first industrial wind farm, the Block Island mission, was constructed throughout the Obama administration in state waters off the coast of Rhode Island. It could have been predated by an earlier wind vitality mission in a federal lease space off the coast of Massachusetts underneath approval by the US Military Corps of Engineers. Nonetheless, that mission, known as Cape Wind, foundered in 2017 following years of litigation sparked by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. amongst others.
Forewarned by the Cape Wind debacle, the Inside Division handed its time throughout the Trump administration by fine-tuning and streamlining a proper course of for mapping and approving wind vitality lease areas in federal waters, to be administered by BOEM, the company’s Bureau of Ocean Power Administration.
Maine Hops Onto The Offshore Wind Bandwagon
One of many first tasks to undergo the BOEM course of was the Winery Wind mission in Massachusetts. The street forward continues to be bumpy — an earlier iteration of the mission was withdrawn and a corporation linked to fossil gas stakeholders is preventing it in court docket — however different tasks are shifting ahead and the Virginia mission is simply the tip of the iceberg.
On October 29, BOEM introduced the outcomes of its first offshore wind lease sale within the Gulf of Maine, the place wind builders face the further problem of deploying new floating wind turbine know-how. Two provisional winners made the lower for a complete of 4 lease areas, Avangrid Renewables and Invenergy NE Offshore Wind. If and when all 4 areas are totally constructed out, BOEM expects the tasks to yield the equal electrical energy demand of greater than 2.3 million typical properties.
The Inside Division additionally took the event to remind the voting public that Trump’s efforts to dam wind vitality within the US didn’t survive Inauguration Day 2021.
In all, BOEM has handed 10 industrial tasks by means of the brand new course of totaling greater than 15 gigawatts. A lot of the exercise has taken place alongside the Atlantic coast, the place situations are optimum for offshore wind vitality. Nonetheless, the workplace additionally lately held its first ever gross sales for coastal states alongside the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean, amongst a complete of six lease gross sales for the reason that Biden-Harris administration took workplace.
If Vice President Kamala Harris prevails on Election Day, search for lots extra the place that got here from. Final spring the Inside Division introduced a brand new five-year offshore wind vitality leasing schedule. Together with gross sales carried out this yr, the company anticipates as much as 12 offshore lease gross sales by means of 2028 protecting waters in US territories in addition to the states bordering the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico.
Whether or not or not that occurs is as much as the voting public. Based mostly on early voting participation, the way forward for wind vitality is within the palms of the very feminine voters Trump has been blowing off.
I’m simply questioning — and maybe you’re, too — if this extra extra expressive type of misogyny in current weeks is a consequence of Trump’s need to seize the media highlight away from his personal running mate JD Vance, who has gained appreciable notoriety for his personal “odd fixation with fertility.”
Or maybe Trump has merely forgotten that he’s speculated to be campaigning for probably the most highly effective elected workplace within the nation if not your complete world. As an alternative, he’s fortunately engaged in re-creating the glory days of his former self, when he was youthful, extra vigorous, and free to precise his “seize ’em by the pussy” concept of male energy to his friends in trade — the US leisure trade, that’s.
Photograph (cropped): The US offshore wind vitality trade has survived, and thrived, regardless of makes an attempt by former President Trump and others to blow it off (courtesy of Dominion Power by way of Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind).
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