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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Florida has no wind generators however it will ban them anyway

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Florida legislature is about to ban offshore wind generators in state waters, which wouldn’t be put there to start with, to guard the seashores.

Excluding hurricanes, in fact, Florida doesn’t have ample wind energy, both onshore or offshore, that, say, states within the US Northeast or Texas must maintain a wind energy {industry}. That’s why Florida has no wind farms – both onshore or offshore. The Sunshine State is a US solar energy chief.

Nevertheless, the Florida state legislature needs to make sure that its nonexistent offshore wind energy {industry} stays nonexistent. It’s about to cross HB 1645, which is able to ban wind generators in state waters.

First, one thing that made me giggle – the invoice defines a wind turbine as a tower, rotor, and blades “able to producing greater than 10 kilowatts {of electrical} energy.” (So, for those who have been planning on powering up your 10 microwaves with a wind turbine, Floridians, you may overlook it.)

The invoice then prohibits wind generators inside 1 mile of the Florida shoreline or Intracoastal waterways. It is going to additionally ban them inside all state waters, extending three nautical miles from shore on the Atlantic Ocean and 9 nautical miles on the Gulf of Mexico aspect. This may make a smidge of sense if somebody needed to develop wind farms there. However they don’t. As a result of there isn’t ample wind.

Maine banned wind farms in its state waters in 2021 to “protect state waters for recreation and fishing.” However in contrast to Florida, Maine is windy nearshore. It’s additionally actively working to develop floating wind farms in federal waters within the Gulf of Maine to harness that clear energy. However Maine didn’t ban transmission cables by state waters, which is what Florida’s invoice additionally bans.

So what’s the purpose of this straw man ban, anyway? The Tampa Bay Occasions stories that Home Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) mentioned:

I feel it’s similar to offshore drilling. Floridians don’t wish to sit on the seaside and have a look at oil derricks, and so they don’t wish to sit on the seaside and have a look at huge windmills.

It doesn’t preclude them from doing it elsewhere within the state the place it’s attainable, however I feel that’s a good place to land.

Wind generators pose little to no risk to seaside views. And Floridians received’t ever have a look at oil derricks from the seaside as a result of oil drilling in state waters was banned in 2018 after the BP oil spill. Banning oil drilling is nice, however doing so in state waters achieves nothing. That was part of the oil {industry}’s “promote drilling however shield the seaside” sleight of hand. Because the BP oil spill proved, it doesn’t matter how far offshore an oil spill is; it’s catastrophic.

And state Senator Jay Collins (R-Tampa) had this to say concerning the impending wind turbine ban:

I feel there are a lot of causes [to climate change] and I feel our climate patterns are cyclic. … Do I feel there are issues we are able to do higher? Completely.

Something that may shield the environment, i.e., let’s cease offshore wind till we are able to ensure that it doesn’t disrupt the sonar of our whales, the ecosystem.

Observe to self to ship Jay Collins my colleague Jameson Dow’s article that definitively dispels the oil industry-driven “wind generators kill whales” propaganda. This has been extensively debunked – it’s ships and local weather change attributable to fossil fuels that kill whales. Collins is enjoying politics.

And talking of local weather change, HB 1645 can even delete the vast majority of references to the phrases “local weather change” in present state regulation. Not that Florida is susceptible to the deleted phrases that start with the letter C or something.

The Tampa Bay Occasions additionally stories that the invoice is “rolling again some laws on pure fuel pipelines by making it so any pipeline shorter than 100 miles wouldn’t must undergo a certification course of. At present, something longer than 15 miles triggers that oversight.”

Roll out these unregulated pure fuel pipelines, Tallahassee Republican supermajority, and really feel proud that you simply saved the seaside view from these hypothetical wind generators in state waters that have been by no means gonna occur.

Learn extra: Oil-funded lobbyists try to trick you into killing extra whales


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