Good-Paying Union Jobs Are Latest Ploy in Last-Ditch Attempt to Sell Offshore Wind

A patriotic pitch to “drive economic growth” seems to be the only strategy left for those interests intent on industrializing the Atlantic Coast of the United States

The Biden Administration and its most prominent East Coast subsidiary, the administration of Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, have been pulling out all the stops in advancing plans to install hundreds of gargantuan wind turbines in the seabed off the Atlantic coast, especially now before the incoming Trump administration takes over with its campaign promise to stop them on “day one.”

Despite the known and anticipated catastrophic environmental consequences of such an assault (many of which have been previously covered in this blog), which include the 70-ton Vineyard Wind turbine blade that fell apart in July, and clear evidence this industrialization of the ocean will likely spell the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale, it has continued to move forward at a relentless pace.

But now, with its acceptance seemingly on borrowed time, a patriotic pitch is being increasingly used to justify it: so-called “green energy” has taken a back seat to good-paying (if likely only temporary) union jobs for American workers.

That message is perhaps most graphically conveyed in a slick, promotional poster being put out by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

In vintage “Madmen” fashion, it starts by talking about “A NATIONAL OPPORTUNITY,” that being “Wind! Wind! Wind, and then, wrapped around a cartoon of a wind turbine, AMERICAN ENERGY AMERICAN JOBS.”

And it’s not just BOEM distracting from the environmental disaster these projects would create.  

In mid-November, the Climate Jobs National Resource Center* (CJNRC), along with Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut issued a report titled “Winds of Prosperity, a Climate and Jobs Strategy for Offshore Wind in New England.”

The groups involved are mostly a mix of labor union chapters of all stripes, such as the Mass. AFL-CIO, local associations of postal workers, electrical workers, operating engineers, carpenters, and painters with a few environmental groups thrown in for good measure, such as the Connecticut Audubon Society. And their “prosperity” report outlines a plan to “scale up” offshore wind, by “doubling down on working together to develop a high road offshore wind industry.”

Then there’s North America’s Building Trade Unions (NABTU), a powerful labor association founded in 1907. In 2022 NABTU entered into an agreement with Danish energy behemoth Orsted to build U.S. offshore wind facilities with an “American union workforce.” That year the association also issued a press release stating it is “committed” to reaching the administration’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, stating it would continue to work with “high-road, responsible partners like Orsted.”

Meanwhile, back in New Jersey…

Despite Orsted’s having since opted out of any immediate plans to construct off the Jersey Shore (with a manufacturing plant in Paulsboro, N.J. now scrapping over a dozen monopiles it was in the process of building for the project), Atlantic Shores has continued pushing construction of 200 turbines off the Jersey coast, making it all appear to be business as usual.

As reported by The Press of Atlantic City, Atlantic Shores (a partnership between French corporation EDF Renewables and Shell New Energies) has just offered up $1 million for a 1.5-acre lot in Atlantic City to use as a “staging and drilling area” to access the underground cables bringing electricity to an offshore substation. The cables, which are planned to take a long and winding path underground will also trespass under “protected” Green Acres land (part of a program created in 1961 to “preserve” and “protect” open space).

Certainly, the creation of union jobs for American workers isn’t a brand new selling point for offshore wind. Noticeably its advocates never mention that many traditional jobs in shore communities, from fishing, clamming, and scalloping to those involved in tourism, will be jeopardized should these projects come to fruition. But in the coming weeks, it will likely represent the industry’s last-ditch strategy in its attempt to ironically enable mostly foreign interests to claim and transform our shores into places that will no longer be recognizable to those who know and love them.

*The Climate Jobs National Resource Center is funded by sources such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($1.5 million) and the MacArthur Foundation ($4 million).