August 19, 2025 — In 2024, I penned an op-ed here at ecoRI News entitled Commonsense Environmentalism is Being Destroyed by a Wind-Less Revolution, opening with a statement that, “the Ocean State has become ground zero for the most important environmental battle in modern times.” Indeed, this battle persists — that is, whether to preserve and protect nature, versus to concede nature for the fantastical ideology of a greenwashed industrial panacea.
This rift was exposed through recent reporting that summarizes the outcome of a recent Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) meeting in Portsmouth, R.I. The meeting aimed to productively discuss the plans for South Coast Wind to run a power cable from 60 miles offshore extending up through the Sakonnet River, beneath Portsmouth, and then up through Mount Hope Bay to Brayton Point. The meeting was well attended, with equal numbers of public comments presented by both opponents and supporters of the project. Despite these equal voices, the ecoRI News article emphasized that those opposed were the minority opinion, even denigrating such opinions as parroted views of those under the thumb of fossil fuel lobbyists.
This is nothing further from the truth, and a significant disservice to those seeking balanced environmental reporting from which their own opinions may be formulated.
While it would take multiple volumes of literature to collate the plethora of very valid concerns for harms that both onshore and offshore industrial activities inflict, it is worth dispelling the mythology promulgated in the follow-up to the EFSB meeting. I will do so here through several exemplary issues that are very real and should resonate for all — regardless of your personal opinions on the windless revolution.
First, the ecoRI News reporting claimed South Coast Wind is “expected to generate 2,400 megawatts (MW) of electricity, powering around a million homes by the end of the decade.” On Jan. 17, 2025, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced approval of a Construction and Operations Plan with the potential to generate up to 2,400 megawatts of which could power 840,000 homes. These facts matter when separating marketing propaganda from reality. For visual perspective, the project is slated to span 127,388 acres of the continental shelf — more than 10 TIMES the land area of Providence. Would you advocate that an equivalent farmland area be mowed for a solar farm? Unlikely.