Trump plans to ban offshore wind turbines. It could be good for Australia

The Australian renewables sector is hoping to grab a bigger share of global investment if US President Donald Trump makes good on his promise to ban offshore wind turbines in the United States.

At a press conference this month, Trump repeated the false claim that wind turbines “obviously” kill whales and said: “We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built.”

He has asked congressman Jeff Van Drew, a vocal critic of offshore wind farms, to write an executive order he could issue to halt wind energy projects without the vote going through Congress.

Trump failed to block an offshore wind energy project near his Menie Estate golf course in Scotland.Credit: BBC

The New Jersey Republican said he had already emailed that draft order to Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick for interior secretary, before the inauguration. He said it was well received and he expected Trump to make the order within the first few months.

Smart Energy Council chief executive John Grimes said this could play to Australia’s favour.

“Offshore wind will play a critical role in Australia’s energy future beyond 2030, and we need to plan for it right now,” Grimes said.

“President-elect Trump’s opposition to offshore wind [turbines] presents opportunities for investment in Australia, and governments should actively encourage that investment.”

Star of the South, 10 kilometres off Gippsland’s south coast, is the most advanced offshore wind project in Australia.Credit: Getty Images

Erin Coldham, chief development officer at Star of the South – Australia’s most advanced offshore wind project off the Gippsland coast – said investors looked for certainty and that made Australia an attractive proposition.

“The positive thing about Australia and investing in offshore wind here is we do have some strong legislated targets, particularly at a Victorian state level, for offshore wind,” Coldham said.

“The signal that’s sending investors is that Australia and Victoria are open for business, and there is still interest in offshore wind with auctions happening around the world.”

Star of the South chief development officer Erin Coldham said Australia would be attractive to offshore wind investors globally.Credit: Nine

The Victorian government passed legislated targets for offshore wind generation capacity in March last year – at least two gigawatts by 2032, four by 2035 and nine by 2040.

Coldham said the NSW government had also recognised the importance of offshore wind, though the energy targets in NSW are for renewable energy more generally.

Gippsland was the first offshore wind zone created in Australia, and Star of the South was granted a five-year exploration licence under the former Coalition government. Since the election of the Albanese government in 2022, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has created five other offshore wind zones, including Illawarra and Hunter in NSW and Bunbury in Western Australia.

As well as being the first offshore wind zone in Australia, Gippsland also has shallow water, allowing traditional wind turbine construction. Deeper water in the Illawarra and Hunter zones requires floating turbines, which is newer technology, though Coldham said it was gaining traction. The global company behind Star of the South had just won a floating offshore wind project tender in Korea, for example.

Wind turbine components at the Revolution Wind construction hub in Rhode Island, US, in June last year. Credit: Bloomberg

Coldham said the Hunter offshore wind zone was appealing for investors because it was close to energy infrastructure and customers such as the Tomago aluminium smelter, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday announced a tax credit to encourage smelters to adopt renewable energy.

In 2021, the Biden administration announced efforts to reach 30GW of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.

US Department of Energy figures from May last year show the first commercial-scale offshore wind power plant in the United States was the 132MW South Fork Wind Farm, which started delivering power to New York in November 2023.

Another 2587MW was under construction in Virginia, and 1644MW was approved in Massachussetts. The total pipeline, including projects in pre-approval, was 80,523MW.

However, a string of offshore wind projects from the likes of Equinor, Orsted and BP have fallen over in the US in the past two years, with developers blaming supply chain issues and rising interest rates.

The US has also seen a huge misinformation campaign against offshore wind energy, which Brown University researchers say was funded by the likes of oil giant ExxonMobil and the Charles Koch Foundation, a right-wing think-tank.

Opposition to offshore wind energy has become an article of faith for the modern Republican Party, and American talking points and phrases such as “wind factories” and “industrialisation of the sea” have been imported to the Australian political debate.

Trump also has personal reasons to dislike the technology after he tried and failed to stop an offshore wind farm in Scotland near his golf course in Aberdeenshire in 2015.

Burgum, who would oversee US federal lands if confirmed in his role, appeared before a US Senate panel last week. He said Trump’s aspiration to achieve US “energy dominance” would counter demand for fossil fuels from autocratic nations, and the US needed to make more “baseload” electricity from coal and other sources to win the “AI arms race” with China.

Of all renewable energy sources, offshore wind is one of the biggest competitors to fossil fuels and the strongest claim to be “baseload power” because it is so reliable.

On land, obstacles such as buildings and mountains interrupt wind, but at sea the wind is stronger and more consistent even when conditions are calm on land. Offshore turbines are also typically much taller with longer blades than their terrestrial equivalents.

Coldham said Australia had the fourth-best technical potential for offshore wind power in the world, and offshore wind was usually strongest when onshore wind and solar energy were weakest.

Maine Senator Angus King asked Burgum if he would commit to continuing with offshore wind project leases that had been issued. Burgum said projects already approved would continue if they made sense.

With AP

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