Offshore headwinds in New York New York has nixed three offshore wind projects, citing GE Vernova's decision to cancel the development of the largest-ever offshore wind turbine, Benjamin Storrow and Heather Richards write. State authorities deemed the projects no longer viable without the supersized turbine, taking an estimated 4 gigawatts of planned offshore wind capacity out of the project pipeline. That's nearly half of the state’s goal to build 9 GW in offshore wind by 2035. “It was to be a big part of New York’s portfolio — and kind of the linchpin — in getting to 9 gigawatts by 2035,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance. The decision from the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority comes after numerous delays in state offshore wind projects. In January, for example, BP and Equinor backed out of their New York contract for the 1.2-GW Empire Wind 2, calling it a "reset" amid high interest rates, supply chain constraints and opposition from communities living near planned transmission infrastructure. RFK Jr.'s climate views to left and right of Biden Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president on a climate platform that he hopes appeals to supporters of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Scott Waldman reports. In a recent interview with POLITICO's E&E News, Kennedy said he is trying to craft a climate policy that “makes sense to skeptics and activists alike.” He criticized the administration’s clean energy subsidies, while saying that voters won’t respond well to climate policies that impose “totalitarian controls.” But he also called for a permanent ban on liquefied natural gas exports, going much further than Biden's temporary pause on LNG export approvals. He also took aim at the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies for carbon capture projects. “[Biden has] played into the hands of the carbon industry by focusing on geoengineering and carbon capture, and that is to me a disastrous endpoint,” Kennedy said. “It’s disastrous from an environmental point of view, and it also is just a subsidy for big carbon.” Kennedy has drawn criticism from both the Biden and Trump campaigns, as well as his own family members (who have endorsed Biden). A dozen green groups also disavowed Kennedy on Friday, calling him a “science denier” whose candidacy stands to hand Trump the presidency. EU to take on Russia’s ‘shadow’ oil fleet The European Commission is planning to target unmarked vessels transporting Russian oil and gas products in a new round of sanctions against Russian-affiliated actors, Stuart Lau writes. Pending deliberations, there could be "actions against owners, operators, insurance companies in [any] third country that Russia today uses to make the shadow fleet possible," Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told POLITICO Europe on Monday. The Russian “shadow” oil fleet consists of over 1,400 ships with opaque ownership, tasked with circumventing Western sanctions on the Russian oil and gas industry. The fleet "is such a large problem ... when it comes to the money that it fuels the war chest of Russia," Billström said.
|