Watch Craig Rucker on OAN.
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April 16, 2025 at 08:57AM
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) just issued a comprehensive review of the Department of the Interior’s offshore wind energy program. Titled “Offshore Wind Energy: Actions Needed to Address Gaps in Interior’s Oversight of Development” (GAO-25-106998), the report provides a postmortem of sorts on a policy agenda that—until recently—was speeding ahead under the Biden administration with the vigor of a runaway freight train.
Today, under President Trump’s 2025 executive orders, the brakes have been applied. No new leasing. No new permits. A full federal review is underway. But this report serves as a sobering account of how rapidly U.S. federal agencies pursued offshore wind energy projects with insufficient oversight, unanswered environmental questions, and minimal accountability to affected communities.
From Acceleration to Suspension: What Changed
Until January 20, 2025, the Biden administration had aggressively pushed offshore wind as a climate panacea. Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) granted 39 commercial leases, with active construction and permitting underway across the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. By executive memorandum, however, President Trump halted further expansion. Federal agencies are now barred from issuing new leases, permits, or approvals pending a top-to-bottom review of wind leasing and permitting practices.
The Trump administration’s actions may have been prescient. The GAO’s findings paint a picture of regulatory agencies that were never ready for prime time.
Environmental Impacts: Uncertainty Was the Norm
Despite the scale of construction under Biden’s offshore wind policy, environmental impacts remained largely speculative:
“Because it is early in U.S. deployment of commercial offshore wind projects, the extent of some impacts is unknown. Moreover, uncertainty exists about long-term and cumulative effects…”
This was no minor oversight. Projects proceeded without a robust understanding of how wind farms would affect marine life, sediment ecosystems, regional currents, or migratory species.
The GAO highlighted threats to marine mammals—especially from pile-driving noise, vessel traffic, and acoustic interference. Meanwhile, the potential for radar disruptions and impacts on national defense systems were flagged but not resolved.
Under Trump’s executive orders, these risks are now under renewed scrutiny, but the damage from rushed permitting remains in motion.
Communities and Cultures Marginalized
Perhaps the most damning section of the GAO report is its treatment of stakeholder engagement—or the lack thereof. BOEM’s tribal consultation was, in GAO’s words, largely symbolic. While Tribes were invited to comment on projects that impacted their cultural landscapes and fishing rights, few received follow-up, and even fewer saw their concerns reflected in final decisions:
“BOEM documents indicate that it received tribal officials’ concerns but do not consistently demonstrate efforts to consider or address these concerns.”
This failure was systemic. GAO found that nearly all Tribes lacked the capacity to engage with BOEM due to funding limitations and technical hurdles. Congress was advised to amend Interior’s authorities to allow direct tribal support—but that never happened under Biden. It may happen under Trump, but it will take more than good intentions to rebuild trust.
The fishing industry was treated similarly. BOEM’s task forces excluded many commercial fisheries stakeholders, and proposed compensation frameworks remained in draft limbo as turbines rose out of the sea. As of the GAO’s writing, affected fishermen still had no clear pathway for redress.
Regulators Absent From the Field
Perhaps most absurdly, BOEM and its enforcement sibling, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), lacked even a physical presence in the North Atlantic—the epicenter of early construction. All oversight was managed remotely from Washington, D.C., or Sterling, Virginia:
“Neither agency has taken the necessary steps to establish a physical office for that region…”
It is difficult to imagine a more emblematic example of bureaucratic detachment.
GAO’s Recommendations
GAO’s report ended with a slate of five recommendations for BOEM and BSEE, and a separate directive to Congress. These included:
- Improving tribal consultation transparency
- Documenting how fisheries concerns are incorporated
- Issuing enforceable standards for community engagement
- Establishing regional field offices
- Requiring data-sharing for environmental monitoring
Interior agreed with all five recommendations—unsurprising, given that the wind had already shifted in Washington. What remains to be seen is whether any of these changes are implemented now that the Biden-era green push has been halted.
Wind’s Reckoning
The GAO report is both a technical analysis and a political indictment. Under the Biden administration, offshore wind energy development was fast-tracked based on aspirational benefits and unsupported assumptions. Environmental risks were minimized, communities were marginalized, and national defense concerns were inadequately addressed.
Now, with offshore wind on pause, the Trump administration has the opportunity—and the obligation—to assess what went wrong. GAO’s findings suggest that a full reset is not only justified but essential.
This was not just a mismanaged rollout. It was an ideologically driven industrial policy masquerading as science-based planning. That story is now written in steel towers in the sea—and in a GAO report that may finally force Washington to reckon with reality.
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April 16, 2025 at 08:09AM
By Paul Homewood
Even by BBC standards, this interview between the BBC’s Sarah Montague and Adam Berman from Energy UK, who are little more than a trade body for renewables, takes some beating.
It is full of misinformation and outright lies, none of which we challenged by the interviewer.
The segment starts at 18.45 in, but you can also read the full transcript at the Daily Sceptic here.
The interview looks at the question of why UK electricity prices are so high.
The answer given by Berman is the same tired old lie that electricity produced from gas is dearer than renewables, and that it is usually gas which sets the market price. This is the relevant comment by Berman:
AB: In some ways we’ve been a victim of our own success which is that we’ve done a fantastic job of getting rid of emissions from the electricity sector in the UK. We’ve got rid of about four-fifths of our emissions since 1990. The vast majority of that has come from a shift coal to gas power stations because gas, when you use it for combustion, it has about half the emissions of coal. The tricky thing is the way our electricity market works, which is that gas makes up about a third of the electricity we generate in the UK on an annual basis, but it sets the price the majority of the time. And that’s because if you look at any given hour you might have lots of different sources of electricity into that; you might have some wind, some solar, some nuclear, but they’re usually not enough to fill every minute in that hour and so you end up having a bit of gas or a lot of gas, depending on what the weather conditions are and, like any international commodity market around the world, it runs on what’s called ‘scarcity pricing’, and so you end up with that final bit of generation setting the price for the whole generation.
SM: So, even if a tiny amount is used, its unit price is what sets the price for much cheaper ways of getting it?
AB: That’s correct.
This is grossly dishonest. Yes, of course, gas does tend to set the market price, but on top of that price renewables receive massive subsidies, which get added on to bills. These subsidies have to be paid because renewables are intrinsically much dearer than gas power, not the reverse.
This year consumers will have to fork out £8.2 billion in Renewable Obligation subsidies alone. Together with the other renewable subsidies, including CfD and Capacity Market, they add about 15% to domestic electricity bills.
OBR
Nowhere in this interview does Sarah Montague challenge this glaring omission.
But then there is a bizarre reference to the Electricity Generator Levy:
SM (garbled): So, over time they’ve all [sic] this clean energy comes in – are they benefiting from clean energy but they’re getting paid for more expensive gas?
AB: So, that has been a problem historically and through the energy crisis the government looked at that because, as you say, they had very low operating costs on a day-to-day basis if you have a wind turbine out in the North Sea, but you might be benefiting notionally from the higher cost of gas which sets the price of electricity. So, there’s actually a standalone tax that addresses that difference which is there to this day which [the] Treasury has refused to this day to [unintelligible] and use to bring down people’s bills.
SM: So, they’re not necessarily benefiting from [it], or at least entirely, but the Government is?
AB: Exactly.
This tax was instituted during the Ukraine Crisis in 2022, but since then has virtually disappeared.
In the first full year, it brought in £3.3 billion, but will drop to just £0.7 billion this year, and will disappear entirely next.
The idea that the Government is sitting on this money is in any event absurd. When the tax was brought in, the purpose was to help fund the support given to households via the Energy Price Cap.
In other words it is a might red herring, deployed by Adam Berman to deflect attention away from how expensive renewables are.
But there is one further comment made by Berman, which is grossly untrue:
SM: So, the charge that it’s because of the dash for Net Zero, that that has seen energy prices rise, is that correct?
AB: No, I mean, if you look at the way electricity prices have moved up and down over the last few years, it is correlated almost exactly with what the international gas prices do. Actually, if you look at the energy crisis from 2022, 2023, it wasn’t really an energy crisis, it was a gas crisis. The government had to spend about £100 billion supporting homes and businesses across the country from cripplingly high energy bills, all because gas was so expensive.
£100 billion? Really?
Of course, it was nothing of the sort, as the OBR told us at the time:
The total cost of supporting households added up to £27.3 billion, not £100 billion, a figure equivalent to a couple of years worth of subsidies for renewables!
Energy UK have made it abundantly clear that their vision is a zero-carbon economy, based around renewable energy. That is their prerogative.
Bu as with any industry body, you cannot trust a word they say.
But it is really is disgraceful that the BBC’s Sarah Montague accepted these lies without a murmur.
https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/about-us/
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April 16, 2025 at 06:34AM
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Now they want the taxpayer to subsidise the second hand market for EVs!
From GB News:
Labour has been urged to intervene and offer more support for used electric vehicles, with experts warning that without support, the car finance sector risks losing “hundreds of millions” of pounds due to lapsing driver demand.
The need for intervention comes as experts warned that due to interest in used electric cars falling, car finance companies have been forced to pass on higher interest rates and car financing costs to consumers.
Earlier this month, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) sent a letter to the Government stating that demand for used EVs is “struggling to keep pace” with supply, which could rise to 178 per cent over the next three years.
The letter stated that the imbalance has meant that EV residual values have dropped by 50 per cent in the last two years, with it expected to decline by a further 28 per cent by 2030.
But the BVRLA warned that weak residuals in the used electric car market have created “financial pressure” on car finance firms, which base their pricing models on optimistic residual value forecasts. This, in turn, has meant that used EVs are worth much less now than expected.
The letter stated: “The difference between the price of the new vehicle and its value on disposal determine the cost of financing, leasing or rental for a customer. This depreciation is costing fleets hundreds of millions and being passed on to new buyers in the form of higher motor finance costs.”
It noted that the second-hand EV market remains under pressure, before calling on the Government to provide residual value support across the automotive value chain.
This could help keep new electric vehicle retail sales lagging behind fleet levels, “straining the automotive ecosystem”, the letter claimed.
It added: “Without a stronger used BEV market where values are stable, the future of the entire transition to electric vehicles is at risk. Cars, vans and trucks all require used market demand at levels that create pricing stability.
“For the transition to electric commercial vehicles to hit its stride, the current position must be improved. There are no silver bullets, and this change can be delivered only through wide-ranging and aligned policy steps.”
Read the full story here.
I have been warning about the looming losses for leasing companies, who are now attempting to sell EVs at the end of leases. As with the new car market, private buyers are simply not interested in the useless things, so second hand prices are going through the floor. Remember that only one-in-ten private buyers went electric last year.
To make matters worse, there will be a flood of EVs hitting the second hand market in the next year or so, and the flood will get bigger year on year. Three years ago, for instance, new EV sales were much lower than they were last year.
But will demand for second hand EVs be any greater than today? It is hard to see why it should be. Indeed as the 2030 deadline approaches there is likely to be strong demand instead for petrol/diesels, as buyers will want to get hold of one before they are gone for good.
Leasing companies have gambled that second hand values for EVs would be as strong as for conventional cars. It is a gamble that could cost them billions.
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April 16, 2025 at 04:03AM
