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President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders following his inauguration earlier this month, and among them was a directive that could curtail major wind projects in development off the North Carolina coast.
Trump’s order halts any new federal offshore wind leases and stops further permitting. Projects already underway in North Carolina–Kitty Hawk South and Carolina Long Bay–will likely hit speedbumps as a result.
Both are early in their development timelines and still require years of planning and approvals before construction can begin.
State and federal clean energy goals helped usher these projects forward in recent years, including Gov. Roy Cooper’s 2021 benchmark of generating 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. But the latest federal appetite has swung against renewable energy, rendering goals like these less realistic.
Trump has said he wants an all-out ban on building new wind turbines and has claimed without evidence that they are killing whales in record numbers.
“Halting offshore wind represents a huge step backward in our efforts to advance a clean energy future and damages the state’s economic opportunities,” Gov. Josh Stein told The Dive. The state has the best wind energy potential on the eastern seaboard, Stein said, representing enough power to match six nuclear reactors. “Investors have signed leases and invested significant resources. They deserve certainty.”
Just three offshore wind projects are operational off domestic federal waters and the Biden administration attempted to usher nearly 11 more through by the end of his term. Offshore wind makes up just a sliver of the overall energy mix in the U.S.
Several companies have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing North Carolina’s federally leased coastal areas. Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition, said the companies should be in good standing to maintain their leases and can make some progress on tasks that don’t require federal permitting. Still, Kollins said the new federal order will affect North Carolina’s projects as several permitting milestones remain.
“This uncertainty directly threatens thousands of jobs held by American workers, risks $25 billion of future investment, and weakens America’s energy security and consumer choice at a time when energy demand is rising,” Kollins said.
Dominion Energy purchased the lease area for Kitty Hawk South near the Virginia state line for $160 million from Avangrid Renewables last year. The project has struggled to negotiate onshore transmission plans due to local opposition.
Farther down the coast, a Duke Energy subsidiary and the French-based TotalEnergies won side-by-side leases for Carolina Long Bay, a roughly 100,000-acre area 22 miles offshore of Brunswick County. The companies paid a combined $315 million to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for the leases in 2022. Last year, the companies jointly conducted a geophysical survey of the areas and the projects remain in the research phase with no transmission plans to date, per the latest updates reported to regulators.
The combined Carolina Long Bay area is projected to power roughly 750,000 homes when completed and create up to 28,000 jobs. Neither company has addressed the new federal freeze, though TotalEnergies’ CEO said in November he’d put the company’s similar New York project on pause under Trump and wait four years.
Republican U.S. Congressman David Rouzer, who represents southeastern North Carolina, lobbied Congress in 2021 to urge regulators to approve new offshore wind leases ahead of Trump’s then-looming moratorium imposed during his first presidential term. In 2022, Rouzer said the Carolina Long Bay wind farm represented an “economic shot in the arm.”
Rouzer’s office didn’t provide a comment on whether his stance remains.
– Johanna F. Still
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Keeping it in House
The New Hanover County school board unanimously agreed Monday to start contract negotiations with Christopher Barnes as permanent superintendent. It’s not a done deal but Barnes’ public statement was fairly positive, saying he was honored and looking forward to the work.
But it wasn’t quite smooth sailing.
One point of contention was that the motion to go into closed session to consider Barnes, made by Republican Vice-Chair Josie Barnhart, was a surprise— both because it wasn’t on the agenda and, more generally, the board had been considering a national search.
Recently elected Democratic member Tim Merrick said the public could “reasonably feel they were given no voice and caught off guard,” after Barnhart’s “ambush.” Barnhart said Barnes “has been on practically a seven-month job interview,” during his time as interim after the board fired Charles Foust last summer. She noted the positive feedback the board received on Barnes’ performance and stressed the desire for a collaborative effort.
Republican Board Chair Melissa Mason said it was “understandable that this may have caught some off guard,” but noted, “the decision itself followed much thoughtful dialogue and was made with the best interests of our district in mind.” She added the board appreciated feedback from teachers, staff, and the community and was “committed to transparency as we move forward.”
Mason acknowledged the potential cost of a broader search—$50,000 to $200,000—was a factor. “The board felt that these resources would be better spent directly supporting our students and staff,” Mason wrote.
Barnes has won over a lot of people during his time as interim. He’s worked hard to solicit feedback from staff and parents, improved on the communication style of his predecessor (which could most charitably be described as “curt”), and put himself out in public. A Facebook video of Barnes making snow angels and announcing a “snow day” could have come off as a media stunt. But Barnes sold it, at least for a lot of people.
Still, some in the Black community were critical of the board’s decision.
In posts on Facebook, Sonya Bennetone-Patrick, chair of the New Hanover County chapter of the National Black Leadership Caucus, referenced the 1898 White Declaration of Independence (the public proclamation of white supremacy that prefaced the violent campaign to overthrow the local government and terrorize the Black community).
“Can y’all believe this group wants The Black CommUNITY to applaud an ALL White Board of Education and Superintendent controlled by the GOP. Where our BIPOC have NO voice. That some real Trump ideology,” she wrote.
(Bennetone-Patrick did not respond to a request for further comment.)
Democrat Judy Justice pushed back online, writing, “stop making ridiculous pronouncements without backing them up with facts,” and noting that numerous talented Black educators and administrators left under Foust.
Bennetone-Patrick has previously conflated the firing of Foust with the ouster of New Hanover Community Endowment CEO William Buster and criticism of Wilmington Police Chief Donny Williams, who is set to retire this year. (As I’ve written elsewhere, I don’t think comparing all three holds up.)
New Hanover County NAACP president LeRon Montgomery was more measured, expressing “disappointment regarding the lack of transparency surrounding the announcement of a broader search. As the decision was made in a closed session, the specific outcomes will remain unknown to us. This situation highlights the implications of the electoral process.”
– Benjamin Schachtman
Around the Region
That’s Amusing: Carolina Beach settled a lawsuit by purchasing several parcels around the boardwalk for $15 million, which Port City Daily reports is the beach town’s largest acquisition to date. The land has been used for the town’s seasonal amusement park.
A Mixed Bag: While violent crime is slightly up in Wilmington, murders and robberies were down, the police department shared in its annual statistics update, WECT reports.
Brunswick Buoy: Despite a slowdown in real estate activity elsewhere due to high interest rates, Brunswick County reported a record high in total sales volume, the State Port Pilot reports.
Around the State
A Lie’s Reckoning
Jessicah Black helped send five teens to prison for murdering Nathaniel Jones. Now she’s trying to exonerate them.
Short-Term Rental Owners Steel Themselves for Long Recovery
Western N.C.’s vacation rental industry, a key component of the tourism economy, faces an uncertain future after Hurricane Helene.
Some N.C. Supreme Court Republicans Seem Willing to Overturn Griffin’s Defeat
While the justices remanded the case to Wake County’s superior court on Wednesday, it’s likely to return.
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