Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said he halted construction of a wind project off the coast of New York earlier this year because scientists revealed that the Biden administration “rushed approval” of the development based on “flawed science.”
But Burgum himself won’t reveal what those scientists said — or present the flaws.
The Trump administration has repeatedly refused to release the NOAA study Burgum cited in April as justification for halting Empire Wind I, which had all of its permits. Construction later restarted after President Donald Trump said he made a deal to boost natural gas pipeline capacity in New York.
The Interior Department, in response to a formal request by POLITICO’s E&E News for the study under the federal Freedom of Information Act, sent a copy of the report that was almost entirely blacked out with redactions. In all, 27 full pages were redacted.
Interior and NOAA — which is part of the Commerce Department — did not respond to requests for comment about the study.
In choosing to withhold all of the document’s findings, Interior cited what’s known as the deliberative process privilege that federal agencies sometimes use to keep internal deliberations secret.
The documents “do not contain or represent formal or informal agency policies or decisions,” Nicholas Policy, a public records officer at Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, wrote in a denial letter to E&E News after it requested the document.
E&E News has appealed Interior’s decision to withhold details of the study.
Burgum abruptly stopped work on the 810-megawatt project off the coast of New York in April.
He said on social media that the halt would last “until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
The administration never produced evidence of that conclusion, which prompted requests for more information.
The so-called screening analysis, largely prepared with information from NOAA Fisheries, listed a straightforward purpose: “Initial assessment of the record related to interactions with NOAA Fisheries resources and the Empire Wind project.”
Days after Burgum halted the project, he posted on social media that NOAA scientists had “revealed” the approval was “built on bad & flawed science.” His post included a link on social media to a Fox News article, which includes quotes from a NOAA “study.”
NOAA found that “monitoring plans to assess project effects on fisheries and habitat resources were inadequate, and existing compensation mechanisms fell short due to flawed scientific methodologies,” according to the article.
Policy with BOEM said that disseminating the memo publicly would cause a “chilling effect” on Interior employees.
The heavily redacted document also was posted to NOAA’s FOIA library reading room page with little or no fanfare in June.
Adam Marshall, senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the redactions sent to E&E News did not appear to meet the standards of the Freedom of Information Act, which governs the release of government records.
The deliberative process exemption is frequently used to “withhold all sorts of embarrassing and inconvenient information,” Marshall said in an interview.
While documents discussing a policy matter internally can be exempted from disclosure, those documents can lose that status if they lead to a decision.
In an April 16 letter to Empire Wind, BOEM’s acting director at the time wrote that the bureau was ordering a construction halt “to allow time for [the agency] to address feedback it has received, including from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”
The association between the stop work order and the NOAA report could be important, Marshall said.
“Even if it was a draft at some point, it can be adopted by the agency and lose that pre-decisional status through adoption,” Marshall said. “I don’t think that these redactions have been justified.”
‘A lot of doubt’
Some conservative groups cheered the stop work order and were disappointed when it was revoked in May.
“President Trump won the election on a campaign of more reliable, resilient, and affordable energy,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who directs the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, said in an email. “His new policies required some already-permitted projects to be halted because wind and solar without backup weaken the electricity grid and raise prices of electricity.”
Having not seen the full report from NOAA, Furchtgott-Roth said she did not know whether it should be released.
Aides to Trump have argued that the administration’s push to temporarily shut down the project opened the door to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) agreeing to allow construction of two gas pipelines. Hochul has said she made no such agreement.
The move surprised many industry players, who thought that Trump’s antipathy for wind would not extend to previously approved projects.
But the moves against Empire Wind have joined the administration’s ever-growing confrontation against the wind industry, and analysts say the mystery and capriciousness behind the NOAA report and the administration’s stance on Empire Wind only adds to the unfavorable environment for clean energy developers and investors.
“If the permitting for the project had actually been rushed or had any issues with it, as the Trump administration has claimed, then why would the administration hide every single word from the 27 pages of findings in the report?” asked Matt Walker, who advocates for renewable power at the NRDC, an environmental group. “It makes one seriously question if there were truly any legal or factual issues with the project review that would have justified the stop work order.”
Daniel Bettinger, a co-founder of TurbineHub, a data company for renewable energy investors and developers, also sought the NOAA records and received the same blacked-out version.
He said in an interview that he wanted details of the report to help his clients gain insight into the workings of the government’s permitting offices.
“Ultimately, what we’re trying to do and what needs to be there is a transparency and ability to gauge predictability for these projects to be underwritten,” Bettinger said. “When we bring in these kind of non-transparent and unclear decisions and certain reports that are redacted, it just brings a lot of doubt into the total U.S. energy market.”
Equinor, the Norwegian energy company that owns the $5 billion Empire Wind project, declined to comment on the stop work order and its fallout.
In May, when the project was allowed to continue, Equinor CEO Anders Opedal said in a statement that he “would like to thank President Trump for finding a solution that saves thousands of American jobs and provides for continued investments in energy infrastructure in the U.S.”
Equinor reported that the monthlong halt cost it tens of millions of dollars, which culminated in a $955 million financial hit caused by the challenges to offshore wind projects and the uncertainty of tariffs.
Other wind energy companies have also encountered headwinds this year.
Ørsted, a Danish company with wind projects underway in the U.S., is seeking to raise billions of dollars because investors have shied away from making bets on wind projects under the Trump administration.
“The intent here is to create maximum uncertainty and slow down these projects so that investment doesn’t go to wind and solar and instead goes back to fossil fuels,” said Alexandra Klass, a law professor at the University of Michigan who worked in the Department of Energy during the Biden administration.
This story also appears in Climatewire.
