A Rhode Island-based environmental watchdog is calling foul on a major offshore wind project—saying it could be pumping more pollution into the air than it saves.
Green Oceans, a nonprofit fighting the “industrialization of the ocean,” urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to revoke air pollution permits for the controversial Revolution Wind project off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
In a formal letter to the EPA’s Boston office, the group claims developers—and the regulators who greenlit them—”materially omitted” key emissions data from their analysis, particularly the pollution from specialized ships used for blade repairs, pile driving, and other maintenance operations.
“Revolution Wind was marketed as a climate solution,” said Green Oceans president Dr. Lisa Quattrocki Knight. “But when you factor in emissions from vessel operations, blade failures, and maintenance, it may actually worsen the problem it claims to fix.”
Cofounder Bill Thompson didn’t mince words: “The cure proves to be as bad or worse than the disease.”
The group says the feds failed to fully weigh the emissions from “ships, tugs, and barges” involved in building and servicing the turbines, or the heavy-lift vessels needed after blade failures—like one that snapped last summer at a Vineyard Wind turbine near Nantucket, sending 50 tons of debris across the Atlantic.
“These are not rare events,” Thompson said. “Thousands of turbine blades fail each year, and we’ve already seen it happen in our own backyard.”
Green Oceans is calling on the EPA to toss the permits and restart the review process—or risk worsening air quality, harming marine life, and further eroding public trust.
“The EPA should go back to Square One,” Thompson said.
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