00:00If, in fact, this is halted here, the mayor of New London, Michael Passero, says the Grinch has just stolen Christmas. Is he right?
00:11Not a heck of a Christmas present, was it?
00:14Look, you just heard the president say he doesn't like wind power, but he's not going to interrupt things that were permitted a long time ago.
00:21Our wind, revolution wind, was actually permitted under Trump one back in 2018-19, so a long time ago.
00:29So this was a real shock to our system.
00:32They did it to us over Labor Day as well.
00:34Remember, they had a stop work order.
00:37No warning at all.
00:38This time they've pulled the permits.
00:40And we've got a fight like heck to come back because you're never going to bring down the price of electricity in New England unless we get more generation, and that's what wind power does.
00:49Governor, in September, your state successfully won its bid in courts to lift the moratorium that the Trump administration put in when it first took office on wind power.
01:01Now the administration is going at it again and raising national security concerns.
01:04Some analysts are looking at that and saying this could be a more durable way to essentially do the same thing.
01:11What's your take, and do you think those national security concerns are legitimate?
01:15No.
01:16I think the president said, I don't like wind power.
01:19Come up with another way that you can shut it down.
01:22And it was only very recently they came up with these national security concerns.
01:27I talked to the Secretary of Interior, Doug Burgum.
01:30I've known him for many years.
01:31I said, I'm not sure this is for real, but if you want to, we'll come down.
01:36We'll talk to you about it.
01:37We'll bring down the folks building the wind power, the engineers.
01:41But don't stop us in mid-construction for the second time in three months.
01:45You're just blowing a hole in our efforts to bring down the price of electricity in New England.
01:52You know, we understand that this project is about 85% complete.
01:57It would power some 350,000 homes across Connecticut and Rhode Island.
02:02What will happen to electricity bills without the wind farm?
02:06More likely to spike.
02:09We can't put pipes in the ground to get natural gas and oil.
02:13We're just not that type of a state.
02:15We don't have that capacity.
02:17It's very rare that we can create our own generation.
02:19Offshore wind is one way we can do that.
02:23And the more generation we have, the less spiking energy during very cold periods.
02:28And that means we can save money for electric rate payers.
02:31We want to welcome our viewers joining us from the TV side of Bloomberg TV colleagues.
02:38And we are here with Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont talking, of course, about this new announcement out of the Department of Energy today, putting a halt on those five major wind farm projects, including the one that's being assembled in your state.
02:50Governor, I'm curious how this is going to play with constituents, not only in your state, but across the country, as energy prices are expensive.
02:58It's cold and they're looking to spike.
03:01You know, the energy crisis is something that's constantly talked about.
03:04This is also an administration that is trying to remove barriers to other forms of energy, including nuclear.
03:11The president has said he wants to restart coal.
03:13So why not add wind energy to that?
03:17Why is this specific mechanism of generating power in his crosshairs?
03:23It is contradictory.
03:25I've talked to the president about this.
03:27He cares very strongly about bringing down the price of electricity, especially in New England, where we don't have a lot of our own generation and gets expensive.
03:35I said, we'll work with you on a nuclear power, work with you on natural gas and other sources, but don't pull the plug on a plant that's already 85 percent complete, ready to turn on in just a few months.
03:48That makes no sense at all.
03:50I thought we had an agreement they weren't going to do that.
03:52Then we were shocked.
03:56All right.
03:56Well, I want to get back to the justification from the administration here, Governor.
04:00And I know you commented on this briefly, but I'd like to hear more about the national security concerns or a lack thereof, knowing that the Interior Department says these turbines may interfere with radar systems.
04:14We understand, however, according to the attorney general, William Tong, the project's already gone through federal review.
04:22He says fully vetted, permitted state, federal, up and down, inside out, every which way you can.
04:27Is that correct?
04:28Yeah, William's absolutely correct.
04:31And actually, it went through a very strong national security review over the last few years, voted on a bipartisan basis in Congress just a year and a half ago.
04:42So is the administration just making this up?
04:45Is the administration just making this up then?
04:52I think so.
04:53But look, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
04:56Get us down there.
04:57We'll bring the very best engineers from Worstead, who's the developer.
05:00We'll talk it through.
05:02But there's no excuse for shutting this down in mid-stride, not in the ninth inning of the ballgame.
05:07Look, they're seeing drones has changed the world dramatically.
05:10They want to take a second look at, you know, onshore radar.
05:13It didn't change the world in the last, you know, 12 months.
05:17Also, this is not, to a point you made earlier, this is not a new technology.
05:22These wind turbines have existed in Europe, much to the president's chagrin, for quite a few years now.
05:26We haven't previously heard of it having big impacts on NATO or Europe's military readiness in offshore areas there.
05:34We've also got some reporting from Bloomberg, an analyst at Raymond James saying,
05:38I'm skeptical that there's any new information about the military concerns all of a sudden that single-handedly warrants these projects being halted.
05:45So do you think this is an aesthetic, not necessarily an economic or national security decision?
05:50I do. I mean, last time around, it was birds and whales.
05:56This time around, it's radar. I don't know what it's going to be next time.
06:00I've got to tell you, I come out of the business world.
06:02I thought the Trump administration had a lot of business folks, and it was going to be a pro-business administration.
06:08But this herky-jerky, on again, off again, first they did it in tariffs, then they did it in SNAP, now they're doing wind power,
06:15makes it very difficult to do business with this administration, very difficult.
06:19Well, I'd like to hear more about that, just from your view in Connecticut.
06:24You mentioned SNAP, we can add Obamacare subsidies that are about to expire, sending people's bills higher.
06:32How much are you and other governors working to fill affordability gaps that are being created by the administration?
06:38I can tell you here in Connecticut, we've set aside, you know, $500 million just to at least protect the most vulnerable.
06:48But the idea that you were going to yank food support from working families when food prices have almost doubled in the last five years made no sense.
06:58And as Trinidad pointed out, when it comes to the health care subsidies and the exchange, people are going to see their bills go up $1,000 or $2,000.
07:06That's a heck of a Christmas present, and that's a real shock to the system.
07:10So we made sure that we protected all of our families up to about $128,000.
07:15Then we softened the blow for everybody else.
07:18Governor, you said you've been talking to the Trump administration throughout this process and about this decision, how they were treating it previously.
07:26I'm wondering, did you get any kind of a heads up?
07:29Have you spoken to the president since this decision came down?
07:32And if not, what do you want to tell him?
07:36No, this really came out of left field at the very last moment.
07:40We had had a conference call, all the governors with Secretaries Bergman, right, just a couple weeks ago, talking about pipelines and natural gas.
07:49This did not come up at all.
07:51Like I said, I think this was a problem, a solution looking for a problem, and it's the wrong solution.
07:59Just lastly then, Governor, what would you tell people driving to work today in Putnam, Connecticut, who are already looking at expensive electric bills?
08:08They're worried about the data center that might be coming in next door.
08:11Do they need to brace for higher prices, and what will they look like in 2026?
08:19Well, we're seeing a pause on data centers just because they suck so much electricity and drive up costs.
08:27But one of the things we need is more generation.
08:29I think those rate payers in Putnam know all too well that we're doing everything we can to add more electricity generation, bring down costs for you and your family.
08:40And calling the plug on revolution win in the ninth inning makes no sense at all.
08:46Well, this is something that we're going to keep talking about here.
08:48It sounds like you might not have a sense or be able to quantify how much those bills are going to rise, Governor.
08:53Is that fair to say?
08:54I can tell you that it's going to go up, and it could go up dramatically during very cold times when wind power is generating the most, and we're going to have a spike in energy demand.
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