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Groups' cooperation presents a new challenge to the

industry

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Several groups believe governments, developers downplaying

environmental risk

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Groups accused of links to right-wing and fossil fuel

interests

By Nichola Groom and Lewis Jackson

LOS ANGELES/SYDNEY, Sept 23 (Reuters) -

Bill Thompson's fight to stop offshore wind farms was once

confined to the tiny U.S. state of Rhode Island where he lives.

Today, he is part of a global movement.

In April, Thompson, who is director of the activist

group Green Oceans, got an email from a fellow anti-offshore

wind group more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away called

Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter). They were looking for

advice on ways to combat projects off Australia's southeast

coast. In August, he got another request, this time from French

group PIEBIEM fighting projects in Brittany.

"It's always nice to know that other people are thinking the

same way you are," he told Reuters.

These groups are among a dozen or more local activist

organizations across the U.S., Europe and Australia who told

Reuters they have begun sharing tactics, talking points and

other resources in their common mission to derail offshore wind

- a development they hope will transform what was once a

disorganized scattering of local activists into an increasingly

sophisticated global network.

Several anti-offshore wind groups said they believe

governments and wind developers, such as Orsted,

Avangrid ( AGR ) and Shell, are downplaying the

environmental damage caused by projects as they promote the

renewable energy source as a solution to climate change.

In most cases, the groups are looking to anti-offshore wind

activists on the U.S. East Coast for advice, citing their years

of success in slowing or cutting the size of major projects,

eroding public support for the technology, and winning over

conservative politicians like former President Donald Trump,

whose administration had supported offshore wind, but now

opposes it virulently as the Republican presidential nominee.

Offshore wind is a nascent industry in the U.S. and a key

pillar of President Joe Biden's plan to fight climate change.

However, plans to install turbines along every U.S. coastline

have been challenged by soaring costs and supply chain snags and

attracted multiple lawsuits over concerns about the industry's

impact on tourism, property values, fishing and marine habitats.

Reuters reporting reveals how the groups' global cooperation

presents a fresh challenge to the industry as it allows new

opposition groups to quickly tap into years of work done by

others. In many cases, it also helps to propagate viral,

politically powerful, but sometimes false talking points,

including that turbines kill endangered whales and do nothing to

slow global warming.

"It's a huge problem, and I don't think the industry has got

its head around A, what's happening, and B, what to do about

it," Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council, a

Lisbon-based industry trade group, said.

Opposition groups say they are just getting started.

"We would like to go further, for example with joint

declarations, and a better media impact, to alert public

opinion," said Eric Sartori, secretary of PIEBIEM, which in

French stands for Preserving the Environmental Identity of

Southern Brittany and the Islands against Offshore Wind.

A U.S. West Coast group told Reuters this month it is

starting a national anti-offshore wind organization. Other

groups, including Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter), said

they have discussed forming a global coalition, especially as

the rest of the world steps up trying to catch up with China,

Britain and Germany, the top producers of offshore wind energy.

INCUBATED ONLINE

Sartori of PIEBIEM said he first contacted Green Oceans and

another group in Nantucket after seeing pictures of broken wind

turbine blades washing ashore in Massachusetts this summer on

social media platform X.

Sartori said Green Oceans' Thompson helped, including by

providing him a quote from a U.S. government agency suggesting

offshore wind has no climate benefit.

That quote - "it is anticipated there will be no collective

impact on global warming as a result of offshore wind projects"

- now appears on PIEBIEM's web site next to photos of fiberglass

shards littering Nantucket's coast.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told Reuters the quote

was part of an environmental analysis of a project, and that the

second half of the sentence - not present on PIEBIEM's site -

says wind projects "may beneficially contribute to a broader

combination of actions to reduce future impacts from climate

change."

BOEM routinely states in its environmental reviews that

wind power will not change the course of global warming on its

own but can help when combined with other actions.

In other groups, posts range from skepticism about whether

wind turbines can survive high winds to fears they will obstruct

ocean views. The most viral, however, is that offshore wind

development threatens whales.

That claim caught fire in the U.S. in early 2023 after

several New Jersey and New York groups blamed the industry for a

spate of whale deaths and caught the attention of conservative

media.

The claim is now repeated by opponents across the globe,

including in France and Australia.

The U.S. government says the claim has no merit, and links

most human-caused whale deaths to vessel strikes and

entanglement in fishing gear.

EXPERT BACKING

Green Oceans has enlisted the support of Spanish marine

biologist Josep Lloret, who has raised concerns about the

potential environmental harms of offshore wind in the

Mediterranean Sea, and hosted a talk by Texas-based journalist

Robert Bryce who is skeptical of the renewable energy

transition.

Other groups piggy-back off their work.

"Green Oceans ... the beauty of them is they have scientists

behind them, so we could look at the papers they are saying are

factual and determine they are peer reviewed," said Jenny

Cullen, president of Australia's Responsible Future (Illawarra

Chapter).

"It wasn't Charlie down the road using ChatGPT to pull up

BS."

The tactics are already helping turn an industry that

received little opposition during its early days in Europe

decades ago into a political hot potato.

In New Jersey, where opposition to offshore wind is arguably

stronger than in any other U.S. state, support for the industry

stood at 50% late last year from 80% four years earlier,

according to a poll by Stockton University.

Trump has also joined the movement, promising to halt

offshore wind projects if he wins back the presidency in

November.

His administration several years ago had promoted offshore

wind as a part of his "America First" agenda, and held a record

offshore wind government auction in 2018.

Trump's campaign did not respond to requests for

comment.

In Australia, which is a new target for offshore wind

developers, the main opposition party has also swung behind the

movement, and public opposition has been growing - reaching 18%

in September, from 12% a year earlier, according to polls from

Freshwater Strategy.

In France, meanwhile, a Senate committee in July recommended

cuts to the nation's offshore wind target, arguing the

technology is expensive and lacks maturity. The nuclear

powerhouse is already lagging its neighbours on renewable energy

and has fallen behind targets set by the European Commission.

In tandem with their successes, groups opposed to offshore

wind have been dogged by accusations they are backed by

right-wing interests linked to the fossil fuel industry.

A 2023 study by researchers at Brown University mapped links

between U.S. groups and conservative think tanks, including a

case in which the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute

supported a lawsuit to block the Vineyard Wind project filed by

a Nantucket group, ACK4Whales.

Amy DiSibio, a board member of ACK4Whales, said her group is

not partisan and has distanced itself from the pro-fossil fuel

think tank. A New Jersey group, Protect Our Coast NJ, said the

same.

"It takes away from our message," Robin Shaffer, president

of Protect Our Coast NJ, said in an interview.