"Its Windsday": Offshore Wind Power

For the same reasons it attracted the bulk of the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, geography was to be destiny for Tidewater Virginia’s participation in the offshore wind economy, Easy transportation connections and a deepwater port attached to the ocean make the region the go-to place for offshore wind power. In contrast to the talk-much, do-little culture of other “green” states, Virginia put a priority of putting wind turbines in the sea. Tidewater’s region, which despite its once-great promise, has been struggling to bring good jobs and retain local talent. Offshore wind farms, or “It’s Windsday”, as a booster touted, would turn the local economy around. Each state has unique energy challenges. Green energy mandates in the Northeast compelled the search for renewable energy. Densely-populated rust belt states were retiring nuclear power plants. Virginia has to reckon with surging energy demand to power its growing data center economy. For several decades, it seems, electricity demand stagnated as light bulbs, insulation, and appliances became more energy efficient. Computer programmers, once terse on account of small and expensive data storage and processing options, have become inefficient, and this trend will not turn around soon. I was in the room- in December 2021- when the Republican Party of Virginia decided to pursue an all-of-the above energy policy. Solar farms, wind turbines, nuclear energy, and clean coal would be the way forward. The cranks and nutjobs who opposed farming the sun, and for that matter, who opposed installing 5G internet in rural areas, were put to pasture. Unfortunately, some of those cranks slithered into federal government agencies. Conservative principles of limited government be damned, they sought to seize the physical assets of large wind investors (by revoking offshore permits), and use the regulatory state to keep business- the wind power business- from participating in the free market. Virginia has so far stayed out of the fray that enveloped wind power projects in the Northeast. That saga is slowly being played out in the courts, where swift and direct action by Congress should have happened.