Experts testified about multiple national security risks posed by offshore wind farms at a Congressional field hearing in Ocean City, Maryland, on Jan. 20.
They said giant wind turbines threaten the effectiveness of military, aviation, and marine radar; energy independence, and food security.
Congressmen Andy Harris (R-Md.), Jeff van Drew (R-N.J.), and Chris Smith (R-N.J.) solicited testimony from experts in environmental and energy policy, economic impact, the fishing industry, and local impact.
“Hard questions being raised by scientists, by activists, environmentalists, those who are in the fishing industry, are not being listened to,” stated Mr. Smith.
“Like canaries in coal mines the spate of tragic whale and dolphin deaths—and well-founded suspicions that geographical surveys, including the use of sonar, may be contributing causes—brought new light and increased scrutiny to the fast-tracking of approximately 3,400 offshore wind turbines, covering 2.4 million acres, all embedded into the ocean floor by pile drivers or floated off our Atlantic Coast.”
The prime risk highlighted by the congressmen and experts was offshore wind turbine interference with radar.
“Wind turbines obfuscate marine vessel radar and will cause significant interference and shadowing and suppress the detection of small contacts,” said Mr. Smith, quoting a report from the National Academy of Sciences.
“Wind turbine mitigation techniques for marine vessel radar have not been substantially investigated, implemented, matured, or deployed.
“So, we’re blind,” Mr. Smith continued. “We have no idea what this is going to do for our military, to all the vessels that make their way into our ocean, as well as jets flying over and aircraft of every kind.”
Megan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Rhode Island commercial fishing company Seafreeze Ltd. and secretary of the Center for Sustainable Fisheries, testified that offshore wind farms interfere with all classes of marine radar.
“There is no current solution,” she said.
According to Ms. Lapp, the Coast Guard has admitted that radar interference would impact its vessels.
“I’ve spoken to multiple boots-on-the-ground Coasties—people who are in charge of local stations, people on boats—and they’re all extremely concerned,” Ms. Lapp said.
“I’ve had them tell me, ‘We’re not going to be able to conduct helicopter search and rescue in wind farms.’
“But they all tell me, ‘We are not allowed to say that. If Congress or someone else asks us about these issues, we have to say we will do the best that we can considering the circumstances.’”
The radar issue has serious implications for national defense as well. Windmills also interfere with the detection of hostile incoming aircraft or missiles.
“The world is awash with threats, and we are blinding ourselves to potential adversaries and real adversaries,” Mr. Smith said.
The noise generated by wind turbines, both in the air and water, creates another security risk.
Mr. Harris relayed that the Department of Defense was concerned because wind turbines and Russian submarines emit underwater soundwaves of similar frequencies.
Robert Rand, who has decades of experience measuring sound, testified that this was a legitimate concern.
“In acoustics, we call it ‘masking,’” he said. “If you have one sound that’s loud enough, you can’t hear a sound that you might be interested in listening to.”
Mr. Harris expressed concern. “If you look at the geography, one would imagine that the target for enemy action coming from a submarine might most likely come from the Atlantic coast aimed at Washington D.C.,” he said.
Food Security
Seafreeze Ltd., Megan Lapp’s employer, is the largest producer and trader of sea-frozen seafood on the East Coast.“Our vessels, due to operational constraints, will be unable to safely harvest in and transit through offshore wind farms,” Ms. Lapp testified.
She noted that the federal government has already leased 2.3 million acres of ocean along the East Coast, mostly to foreign-owned companies, and is prepared to lease more.
“We are rapidly losing our place of business,” Ms. Lapp said.
“Our elected representatives are going to have to decide if they want U.S. harvested seafood and national food security, or if they want foreign government-owned offshore wind energy. You can’t have both.”
A Maryland law passed in 2023 set the goal of generating 8.5 gigawatts of power from offshore wind farms.
Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, testified that over the 20-year operational life of the offshore wind turbines, they will cost each Maryland family $25,000.
Besides the astronomical costs of building the ocean wind turbines, Mr. Fisher stated, wind energy is costly because it is intermittent, and the power grid still needs sources like gas-fired power plants for backup.
So customers end up paying for both the intermittent and the reliable power sources, he said, and this increases energy costs and impairs the nation’s competitive position on the world stage.
“One of the only ways that we are competitive against China—it’s not labor costs; it’s not materials costs. They beat us on those fronts,” Mr. Fisher testified.
“We have one of the most reliable and low-cost power grids in the world. Policies like this risk sacrificing that. It’s our best asset, and these policies directly undermine our best asset.”
Mr. Fisher said that in 2023, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation—the nation’s grid reliability watchdog—identified energy policy as a threat to the reliability of the grid.
Pause the Rush to Build
Offshore wind farms pose not only national security risks but also threaten the tourism industry in coastal towns and marine wildlife, the experts testified. All three congressmen decried the Biden administration’s headlong rush to build turbines in the ocean.Soon after taking office, the administration announced its goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy projects by 2030.
The government said it would take “coordinated steps to support rapid offshore wind deployment.”
“Why the hurry-up offense?” Mr. Smith asked. “One of the reasons is that as part Inflation Reduction Act—which we all voted against—there was language included that said the taxpayer will bear 30 percent of all construction costs if construction begins on or before Jan. 1, 2026.”
Mr. Van Drew said there was nothing green about offshore wind energy. “The only green about this is the money, the billions of dollars, that’s going into a lot of investors’ pockets.”
“They don’t care about our ocean; they don’t care about our environment;” he continued. “They’re here to make money. They’re not even American companies, and they’re fossil fuel companies.
“How crazy is it that we would allow foreign-owned companies to do this to our American coast? How crazy and wrong is it, that we would allow them to get away with that, and to own and control our energy?”
Leading the effort to build offshore wind farms is the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which awards the offshore wind lease areas and approves wind farm projects.
One of the projects, US Wind, proposes to build up to 121 wind turbines only 10 nautical miles from the coast of Maryland.
Mr. Harris invited US Wind to testify at the hearing. The company did not respond. He also invited BOEM and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is charged with the conservation and management of fisheries and marine mammals. BOEM and NOAA declined to participate.
At the end of the hearing, Mr. Harris said that Americans should think long and hard before beginning the industrialization of the ocean. “Hold off on this before we make a mistake that we will regret,” he said.
