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Eric Adams is running with the wind.
The mayor is pleading with President Trump to revive a wind farm off Long Island’s coast that was halted by the administration in the middle of construction last week.
Resuscitating the Empire Wind Project would feed power into the “long-underutilized” South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, juice up to 500,000 homes and create more than 1,000 good paying jobs, Adams said.
“This project reinvests in Brooklyn’s working waterfront and advances a more dependable electricity grid to meet our city’s increased energy demands,” the mayor told The Post of the project, which had already received lease and permit approvals prior to Trump’s return to office in January.
“Our administration is also in touch with the US Department of Interior to engage with them directly on this,” Adams said.
Critics have accused Adams of cozying up to Trump while his Justice Department moved to withdraw a criminal corruption case against the mayor, which led to its dismissal.
But Hizzoner, a Democrat who is running for re-election as an independent, differs with Trump on wind power.
Trump issued an executive order in January to block all pending offshore windshore projects and review current ones. Meanwhile Adams has backed the wind project since before he was elected as mayor, when he served as Brooklyn borough president.
After the Interior department shut down Empire Wind, Adams met with Jens Økland, acting executive vice president for renewables with Norwegian-based developer Equinor, the developer that had already started construction of the foundation to erect 54 wind turbines some 15 miles off the Long Island coast.
An Equinor spokesperson said the project would invest $1.6 billion into the state’s economy.
“The United States fully approved the project in early 2024 and construction is more than 30 percent complete,” the spokesperson said. “We will engage directly with all relevant stakeholders to understand the questions raised by the federal government about the permits we have received from authorities.”
The company said construction continues at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, where work is more than 50 percent complete.
Still, the project is seeing blowback from the Long Island commercial fishing industry and Republicans with ties to Trump, including Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. They have argued turbines would harm marine life.
And the president has shown no signs of softening his stance on the industry and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had said there were “serious issues” with the Biden administration’s approval of the wind farm which he claimed were completed “without sufficient analysis or consultation.”
The Interior Department had no immediate comment on Adams’ appeal to revive the sprawling win to boost renewable energy.
The suspension of Empire Wind — even temporarily — is a setback for the mandates in New York’s green energy law.
Under the Climate Act, New York must reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030 and have 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040.
Rules also require the Empire State to generate 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035, 6,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2025 and build 3,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030.
US Environmental Protection Administrator Lee Zeldin called the timetables in New York’s law “delusional” and a “left-wing recipe for an energy and economic catastrophe.”
English (US)