The U.S. Must Combat a ‘Wild, Wild West' of Misinformation to Scale Clean Energy, White House Aide Says

As someone who lives a mile from New England’s second largest commercial fishing port, the most controversial bumper sticker I used to see on my neighbors’ rusty pickup trucks was, “Tilapia is NOT Seafood.”

While the merits of eating factory farmed fish versus the tons of fresh flounder, halibut, sea bass and squid processed in Rhode Island’s Port of Galilee has not abated, the much louder battle cry over the last couple of years has been focused on the dozens of offshore wind turbines under construction off Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard and the south fork of Long Island. 

Unsubstantiated claims tying ocean wind farms to the deaths of whales and birds have become a rallying cry during the presidential election. When debris from a faulty turbine blade forced the closing of a beach on Nantucket during the peak summer season, calls for a construction halt became even louder. 

It’s against that backdrop White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi provided a progress report Monday on whether it is still possible to achieve President Joe Biden’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of clean electricity by 2030 as part of the U.S. battle to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

“We've greenlit enough projects to build out 15 gigawatts of that offshore wind resource,” Zaidi said at a Reuters sustainability conference in New York, acknowledging cost overruns and production mistakes have also stymied progress.  

South Fork Wind, 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York, is currently delivering electricity to the state's grid, Zaidi said. Dominion Wind, 27 miles off Virginia Beach, is on budget and on schedule. 

“I think there's a lot of learning that's coming out of this first round of projects. There's a lot of investment into the supply chain which now reaches 46 states across the country,” Zaidi said, adding that the United States is playing catch-up with Europe on offshore wind development.

On the topic of misinformation heading into November’s election, the Biden aide admitted that debunking conspiracy theories is a substantial distraction.

“I think part of propelling a clean energy transformation in the United States is making sure folks see the cause and effect in a positive way. It becomes more complex when you've got people surging misinformation,” Zaidi said.  “The vehicle transformation is one example, where the petroleum producers have actually been funding the ads to mislead folks about what our policy is, which is a policy around choice, affordability and making things in America — not about bans or mandates." 

He sees combatting misinformation as "just part of the terrain these days," adding: “I think it's a task made more difficult by the wild, wild west online. But it's an important thing for us to figure out if our democracy is going to meet the test of this incredible crisis.”