By Mark Chediak, Cam Baker, and Greg Ryan Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey urged President Donald Trump to stop the government’s push to halt offshore wind developments, saying more electricity supplies are needed to help consumers struggling to pay already-high utility bills. The federal government should be “working with states, not against states, in an effort to bring more power on board,” Healey said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News in Boston. “That’s what I really urge the Trump administration to get back to. It makes no sense.” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey says the Trump administration’s effort to halt offshore wind developments “makes no sense.” Healey spoke with Bloomberg’s Caroline Gage. Healey spoke hours after the Massachusetts wind industry suffered a new blow when a court filing showed that the US is working to withdraw a permit for the New England Wind 1 and 2 offshore wind projects near Nantucket. BloombergNEF estimates the total project’s valuation at $14.6 billion. Read More: Trump Plans to Block Iberdrola Massachusetts Wind Projects Days earlier, the administration moved to review a permit for a separate wind farm off the state’s coast. Since taking office in January, Trump has issued a flurry of orders designed to stymie the fledgling US offshore wind business, threatening billions of dollars of investments, hundreds of jobs and new power supplies. Healey, in a wide-ranging discussion in which she also assailed Trump’s cuts to university research and his immigration crackdown, warned that upending wind projects would worsen the financial burden on households. Read More: Trump Channels Hatred for Wind Farms Into Strike Against Orsted “Everyone in America is dealing with the high cost of energy,” she said, adding that more electricity is also needed to power data centers. The Trump administration has argued that offshore wind farms are expensive, unreliable and a threat to national security. Earlier this week, Healey and other Democratic governors from the Northeast pushed back, calling on the White House “to uphold all offshore wind permits already granted and allow these projects to be constructed.” One project that has seen some reprieve is in New York, where work on a wind farm off Long Island was allowed to resume. New York Governor Kathy Hochul brokered a deal with the Trump administration on allowances for that project after signaling she wouldn’t block other energy projects in the state, opening up a path for new natural gas pipelines. In the interview, Healey said she’d consider any proposals for new gas pipelines sent her way. She said she supports a 10-year natural-gas contract proposal from Massachusetts utility Eversource Energy as a “near-term solve.” Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. |