[Daily Caller] Is investor interest in committing billions of dollars to new offshore wind projects starting to wane in the United States? If the results of last week’s heavily-touted Biden administration lease sale in the Western Gulf of Mexico are any indication, that could be the case.The auction resulted in a single tract of 102,480 acres offshore Louisiana attracting a winning bid $5.6 million from German wind company RWE. Two tracts offshore Texas that were also offered attracted no bids at all. That low bid level is a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars in bids received for leases off the northeast Atlantic coast in February, 2022.
Several factors could be at play in creating the lack of interest in this Gulf of Mexico sale, perhaps most prominent among them the fact that, since wind developers began conducting seismic testing for those Atlantic projects last fall, the dead carcasses of more than 60 baleen whales have washed up onto the beaches of New Jersey and New York. While the Biden regulators claim no cause-and-effect connection exists between the developments and whale deaths exists, a rising chorus of critics begs to disagree. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: Should We Believe The Media Hype Linking Hurricane Idalia To Climate Change?)
Former California gubernatorial candidate and climate activist Michael Shellenberger serves as executive producer of a new documentary released in August that claims to have scientifically established a direct connection. "The film documents surprisingly loud, high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones," Shellenberger recently wrote at the New York Post. "And it shows that the wind industry’s increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths."
The fisheries industry is also concerned about the negative impacts offshore wind development will have on its continued ability to conduct its business. Meghan Lapp, a spokesperson for The Center for Sustainable Fisheries, testified to a congressional hearing in May that the undersea cabling and other infrastructure of the wind developments will make it impossible for offshore wind and the fishing industry to co-exist. She also noted that the federal agency NOAA is failing to enforce its own regulations governing incidental takes of marine mammals as they relate to offshore wind in the same way the agency has consistently enforced them related to offshore oil and gas development.