Support for Offshore Wind Sinks as More Citizens Learn the Dirty Details

As people become increasingly aware of the assortment of catastrophes associated with this so-called clean energy, the more they are fighting it.

One of the many marine mammal strandings along the East Coast in recent years. This is a female dolphin calf who beached with its mother at Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey, in March 2023 being attended to by a member of the Brigantine Marine Mammal Stranding Center. The mother was dead when they arrived on the scene, and the calf was later euthanized. (Photo by Michael McKenna)

The fact that public support for offshore wind in New Jersey is dropping steadily should come as no surprise.

Nevertheless, pollsters, and academics – along with industry protagonists – attribute that to misinformation, biased politics, and citizens who don’t “get” the big picture. But they do, and the more people learn about the assortment of catastrophes associated with this so-called clean energy, the more they are fighting it.

The survey says…

In New Jersey, the tide has turned against offshore wind, especially when it comes to those who live in shore communities.

Support for wind turbines “plummeted” to 33% in favor in 2023 compared to 77% in 2019, according to a poll of shore community residents conducted by Stockton University.

But even more telling is the fact that in the 2023 survey across the state, 71% said offshore wind turbines would “affect ocean views,” 55% thought it would impact tourism, and 68% felt that the turbines would “affect marine life” (with 44% fearing it would harm marine life “a great deal”). And a majority opposed the idea of giving offshore wind companies tax breaks.

Apparently these results came as a shock to Stockton, a university that has long enjoyed a “partnership” with offshore wind company Orsted. So, to “provide additional context” to the disappointing survey outcome, it trotted out longtime professor and expert in all things wind-related, Dr. Patrick Hossay.

Hossay, who was a past consultant for a long-ago attempt to build a small number of turbines in state waters off of Atlantic City, appeared in a 30-minute video attached to the Stockton survey release to tell us that folks with concerns about views, whales, bats, and birds really have nothing to worry about.

Stating that “at this point” he has no connection with any company doing offshore wind work in the U.S., Hossay wants these folks with “good hearts and good intentions” to know that they may have been “…intentionally misinformed and now are frightened.” According to the professor the proposed New Jersey turbines will “barely be visible,” the environmental impact will be “modest at best,” and offshore wind represents a “wonderful opportunity for the ratepayers and the citizens of New Jersey.”

Obviously, most New Jerseyans did not get the Hossay memo, because other polls reveal even more negative sentiments towards offshore wind.

A survey conducted by a Long Beach Island taxpayer association, also in 2023, found that 77% of LBI residents do not support the proposed Atlantic Shores offshore wind project (with 53% against any offshore wind energy). Well over 70% of the LBI homeowners polled felt the plan would harm wildlife, ocean views, and commercial fishing.

And to further the fact that support for wind energy has taken a nosedive in the Garden State comes another 2023 survey, this one from Monmouth University.

It found that statewide resistance to offshore wind has ballooned from just 15% in 2019 to a recent 40%. The Monmouth poll also discovered that 40% of New Jerseyans felt the plan would “hurt” tourism, 45% said that whale strandings were likely related to offshore wind development, and 70% believed that the prospect of the industry bringing a job boom to the state was not going to materialize.

Barbarians at the gate

So what has happened that would produce such a dramatic shift in the public’s opinion?

Has it been all the dead whales and other marine mammal strandings along the East Coast? Maybe folks discovered that to proceed wind companies need to obtain “harassment authorizations” as a workaround to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, allowing them to legally harass and harm tens of thousands of these creatures, some of whom are critically endangered.

Perhaps the news that offshore wind needs to make use of many thousands of pounds of SF₆ (sulfur hexafluoride), the most potent and devastating greenhouse gas yet known, has made folks think twice. Or was it the fact that both experts and the regulatory authorities permitting these activities admit they don’t know what the true environmental consequences will be?

For example, NOAA Fisheries, the governmental agency that issues those “incidental harassment authorizations” (stated to be “unintentional, but not unexpected”) says on its webpage that the “potential ecological impacts of offshore wind” may:

• Change the soundscape, which could adversely impact fish, marine mammals, and other species;

• Introduce electromagnetic fields that could impact fish navigation, predator detection, communication, and the ability for marine life to find mates;

• Alter local or regional hydrodynamics, which could change local and regional-scale ecosystems;

• Create a “reef effect” where marine life clusters around the hard surfaces of wind turbines and associated structures;

• Increase vessel traffic, which could lead to more vessel strikes, and

• (Cause) corrosion-protection systems (to) release contaminants that could be consumed or absorbed by marine life.

“These impacts,” NOAA states, “have the potential to affect organism life cycle stages—including larval dispersal and spawning—and species’ composition, abundance, distribution, behavior, and survival rates.”

And despite the claim that fossil fuel interests have been sneakily supporting activists to protect profits, it turns out that the key players in the U.S. offshore wind industry were mostly foreign, and mostly spin-offs from the oil and gas sector.

No matter how those such as Professor Hossay try to spin it, referencing the bad news as coming from “…some players …that are misrepresenting reality and science,” the facts are out, and no one is going to be able to whitewash offshore wind ever again.