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Posted by rbanffy 2 days ago

US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified(arstechnica.com)
604 points | 518 commentspage 6
nextworddev 2 days ago|
Prefer solar over wind
zppln 2 days ago||
This happens all the time in my country. The navy has all kinds of gear deployed in the sea that could be interfered with.

Edit: Looks like they were a bit late to veto it here though.

breakyerself 2 days ago|
This is obviously because Donald Trump notoriously hates offshore wind turbines.
dboreham 2 days ago||
Perhaps worth recapping that he hates them due to a specific personal event (the same is true for everything he does, if you dig deep enough to find the reason). In this case he developed a golf resort on the East Coast of Scotland. Meanwhile wind generators were also being deployed immediately offshore. He became enraged that the view from his new development was blighted by the turbines. So it isn't even due to oil industry bribery. It's personal.
smolder 2 days ago|||
I don't know why people think wind turbines are ugly... Someone who admires gold toilets, no less. I think the opposite.
BurningFrog 2 days ago|||
I think you just found the compromise:

Gold painted wind turbines. Art of the Deal!

nxor 2 days ago|||
[dead]
Swenrekcah 2 days ago||||
In that case he would just approve wind farms that fuck with people he dislikes.

It seems to me this is very much intentional to keep oil demand up and prices high.

anigbrowl 2 days ago|||
The problem there is that other people don't hate wind farms the way he does.
ceejayoz 2 days ago|||
I’m pretty sure the list of people Trump outright likes is approximately one.
cosmicgadget 2 days ago|||
Much like a certain White House Correspondents' Dinner incident.
alecco 2 days ago||
Occam's Razor: offshore wind requires a lot of rare earths for their magnets and whatnot. US military-industrial complex needs the little remaining global supply not under China's export controls.
KaiserPro 2 days ago||
> offshore wind requires a lot of rare earths for their magnets

compared to the general motor market in the USA? I think thats out by a few orders of magnitude.

Radar shadow is vaguely plausible, if your radar is shit and needs replacing.

it also requires your hydrophone network to not be working that well either.

platevoltage 2 days ago|||
This could very well be the excuse they're using. The reality is almost certainly more petty than that given the great one's irrational hate of wind power.
bongodongobob 2 days ago|||
Occams Razor: Trump openly hates windmills and green energy
hristov 2 days ago|||
Any electricity produced by turning generators will require rare earths. This includes, every current non-trivial electricity source with the exception of solar. Gas, oil, coal and nuclear all work by heating steam and running it through a turbine that turns a generator that makes electricity. For hydro, the falling water turns the turbine/generator.

So any source of electricity that may replace these wind turbines (other than solar) will require about the same amount of rare-earths. And lets face it, Trump is doing his best to hamstring solar as well. He has cancelled all solar subsidies and has hit solar with major tariffs.

I think Occams Razor would lead to a very different conclusion.

cesarb 2 days ago||
> Any electricity produced by turning generators will require rare earths.

AFAIK, not all kinds of rotating generators require rare earths; IIRC, induction motors don't need any permanent magnets.

immibis 2 days ago||
AFAIK, modern wind turbines use types of induction motors because it allows them to adjust the rotation speed by applying a counter-rotating stator field (which is a very neat trick) - older turbines had to rotate at a fixed divisor of 3600 rpm (grid frequency).
cr1895 2 days ago|||
So, let's halt projects for which most fabrication of components is already completed?
techgnosis 2 days ago||
This feels extremely plausible. I don't see anyone else saying this yet, well done.
politician 2 days ago||
Global human populations are in decline; fossil fuel use will decline along with us.

If humans no longer use as much carbon (because they no longer exist in large numbers), doesn’t that alone adequately address the climate change concerns? Does it really make sense to overhaul the global energy generation infrastructure given these conditions?

defrost 2 days ago|
> Global human populations are in decline; fossil fuel use will decline along with us.

That doesn't follow as the per capita consumption trends are still steadily increasing ... large numbers of people across the planet barely using any resources is far less of a problem than substantially fewer people all consuming like central north americans (which is increasingly the aspiration goal).

> doesn’t that alone adequately address the climate change concerns?

No.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already problematic and will remain there for hundreds of years (unless removed).

The amount added each year by human activity is still increasing .. it needs to stop increasing, and to fall substantiatly, and probably something done about extraction or other mitigation.

> Does it really make sense to overhaul the global energy generation infrastructure

Yes .. and on the plus side that's already happening thanks to China, the EU, past US administrations, etc. THe current US administration isn't helping .. they appear to be doing very much the opposite of helping given the cosy relationship with existing fossil fuel companies.

exabrial 2 days ago||
I actually believe the radar surveillance excuse (on a technicalities only), if that's what this is going to come down to. The ocean is a big empty place and prime for picking up radar reflections as the background is pretty quiet.

However... how on earth was this not identified like 10 years ago way before these projects were even started? Seems pretty obvious in hindsight.

Retz4o4 2 days ago||
Youre taking the bait.
bakies 2 days ago|||
Sounds plausible but it would have been identified 10 years ago which is why everyone in the thread thinks it's a dubious claim.

One I would have believed more is that they're worried about being too reliable on the offshore wind which can be easily attacked by a foreign navy or maybe a smaller group.

platevoltage 2 days ago|||
It's almost certainly the best excuse they could think up to placate the masses.
janc_ 2 days ago||
There is a Belgian company that can use temperarure & other fluctuations in underseas power & cimmunication cables to detect nearby objects etc. I'm sure they are willing to help the US navy if they can convince them the US is a solid NATO partner… ( oh, wait, that might have become difficult…)
ineedaj0b 2 days ago||
We don’t need offshore wind or onshore. Wish the US focused more on Solar. Seems to be the smartest path forward.

China understands and is gunning for Nuclear and Solar. Geothermal and wind are nice but too location dependent.

bryanlarsen 2 days ago||
Wind and solar are highly complementary. Wind tends to be peak during evening and morning, and is often stronger at night than during the day. Wind is cheaper than overbuilding solar and adding batteries.
ineedaj0b 1 day ago||
Everyone hates living near the turbines. They are loud, an eyesore, kill birds in droves, and cause annoying flickering.

People don’t mind solar as much.

Wind cannot compete on solar for price especially with China reducing solars base cost each year.

cr1895 1 day ago|||
China is building out immense offshore wind capacity - more than 41GW operational currently, about half of global capacity.

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2025/02/07/half-of-global-opera...

michelsedgh 2 days ago||
The big solar plant they made in between Cali and Las Vegas one, it wasn't online more than a few years? It shut down...
martinpw 2 days ago|||
It shut down because it can't compete cost wise with ... solar. Specifically solar photovoltaic.
jeffbee 2 days ago|||
You're thinking of an actually quite small solar-thermal plant, which is bankrupt because solar-thermal is a dumb idea.
michelsedgh 2 days ago||
If its a dumb idea, why waste billions of dollars on it? Do you know how much pollution that shutted down plant is? It was HugE I've gone past it. So much waste for a "dumb idea"
jeffbee 1 day ago||
This is what's wrong with Americans in one succinct example. "Look at all the pollution from this field of mirrors" he thinks while driving on the freeway to Las Vegas.
linuxftw 2 days ago|
To be fair, there could absolutely be national security issues. One example might be undersea (or even surface) navigation. If the coastline is littered with windmills off shore, this might create a negative of submarine navigation routes. That's clearly information we don't want shared with adversaries. There might be undersea classified cables. There might be classified sonar stations. It might be hard to detect adversary subs within a windmill field due to extra noise, etc.
breakyerself 2 days ago||
Sure. We can always imagine an excuse to avoid dealing with the obvious reality. I don't think it's productive though.
vntok 2 days ago|||
Yet Sweden did it too (https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/11/11/why-swe...) and they quote these defense-related reasons. Are they lying, do you believe that Sweden of all countries is under Trump's direct influence re: wind aversion?
breakyerself 2 days ago|||
Sweden is worried about a hostile neighbor. They're freaked out enough that they joined NATO after generations of non-alignment.

Who are we afraid of? If ICBMs are incoming to the Continental United States the world is ending. Regardless of whether we prevent wind farms in any of the 12,000+ miles of coastline.

Are we expecting missiles to come from the Gulf of Mexico? People always bend over backwards to justify this administration. It's tiresome.

riku_iki 1 day ago||
> If ICBMs are incoming to the Continental United States the world is ending.

its up to discussion. US has many measures which combined could give them a chance to survive nuclear war, namely: preemptive strike by tridents on enemy's silos(https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...) and anti missile defense.

> Are we expecting missiles to come from the Gulf of Mexico?

there is a possibility of submarine launch from that direction.

breakyerself 1 day ago||
Nuclear war isn't winnable. It's stupid and dangerous to pretend otherwise.
riku_iki 1 day ago||
humans already gave nuclear buttons to politicians and dictators with questionable intelligence, so it doesn't matter what you are pretending to be exactly.
LastTrain 2 days ago||||
Sweden did not ban all offshore wind projects.
jopsen 2 days ago||||
Defense related reasons canceled projects early in the planning phase.

This is the kind of thing you know years before construction is even funded, much less started.

This is a US administration being dishonest, whether for stupidity or to apply political pressure who knows.

baobun 2 days ago|||
> do you believe that Sweden of all countries is under Trump's direct influence re: wind aversion?

It looks increasingly like a US vassal state for every year so that part wouldn't be so surprising.

Besides, the article you posted does not support your claim that Sweden blocked all offshore wind construction. On the contrary it refutes it by mentioning some greenlit offshore wind construction projects.

nailer 2 days ago||||
A conspiracy is not the obvious reality.
immibis 2 days ago|||
Project 2025 is a conspiracy that is obvious, is reality, and includes blocking windmills
breakyerself 2 days ago|||
Unless the conspiracy is being done by malicious idiots with too much power.
roamerz 2 days ago|||
They were approved by a prior administration that prioritized green energy over national security.

There are several other comments above that allege other countries have come to the same conclusion regarding offshore wind farms having a negative affect on radar.

anigbrowl 2 days ago|||
Great, then they can explain the reasons. Most transparent administration in history, remember?
roamerz 2 days ago||
The reasons are clearly stated and widely reported by multiple news sources: The Trump administration ordered an immediate pause on five major offshore wind projects, citing national security risks due to radar interference.

Not much on details besides a “classified study“ but sounds pretty transparent to me?

array_key_first 2 days ago|||
> They were approved by a prior administration that prioritized green energy over national security.

This is delusional. The US has been spending metrics fucktons of money on national security since long before Trump.

Biden, like trump, was absolutely a war monger, as almost all US presidents are. He was a center neoliberal politician who love love LOVED the military industrial complex, and it shows in all of his policy choices.

This characterization of the modern American Democrats as communist hippies is just so out of touch with reality it's not even worth humoring. It's just wrong. You're wrong.

jimt1234 2 days ago|||
If the US had a normal, rational Administration, then yeah, I'd probably accept the "national security" explanation. But when the Administration claims completing the White House ballroom is a matter of "national security", and Antifa is the current largest threat to "national security", then credibility for these claims is completely lost.
vntok 2 days ago||
> But when the Administration claims completing the White House ballroom is a matter of "national security"

All other things equal, opening a literal breach in one of the white house's exterior wall seems like it would cause a "national security" issue if the construction project was not finished and the hole remained gaping afterwards.

amanaplanacanal 2 days ago||
I'm thinking maybe they shouldn't have done that. Unfortunately they are all incompetent.
ribosometronome 2 days ago|||
If that were the case, why would they have been granted the leases in the first place?
petre 2 days ago|||
Yeah, especially enemy submarines. A windmill farm presents opportunities for defense: as a platform to mount and power sonar, radar arrays or other early warning systems, the power cables are actual decoys for comms infra, the farm itsrlf is an obstacle for drones and enemy subs.
cr1895 2 days ago|||
>To be fair, there could absolutely be national security issues.

Which is precisely why US defence agencies are heavily involved in the permitting and design of these wind farms from the start, to account for these valid issues.

drivingmenuts 2 days ago||
Are the areas that we are placing windmills regularly navigated by submarines? And wouldn't windmills cause as much, or more, issues for an adversary submarines?

I smell BS.