6 days Ago By Carl Campanile
Not in Bruce’s backyard! Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is ramping up his campaign against green energy on his turf — including a planned windmill farm off Long Island’s coast and potential lithium-ion battery storage facilities. “We don’t want battery storage facilities in Nassau. We don’t want wind turbines off Nassau.
We don’t want power lines for these facilities running through Nassau,” Blakeman told The Post ahead of a press conference Wednesday in Long Beach against the aforementioned projects. He will be joined by members of the group Protect Our Coast Long Island. Blakeman is targeting a massive wind power project in federal waterways 15 miles off the coast of Long Beach called Empire Wind 1 .
President Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office blocking or pausing all new wind energy leasing in federal waterways. But Norway-based Equinor had already obtained all the necessary federal lease and permit approvals from the feds to erect 54 giant wind turbines before the ban went into effect, The Post reported. Construction laying the foundation for the turbines is underway.
Equinor will deliver the power by connecting to Con Edison’s electric grid via a cable link from the ocean floor to the substation at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park. But Republican Blakeman — a pal of Trump who is eying a run for governor next year — argued that windmills destroy aquatic life and birds and hurt the local fishing industry. “I’m opposed to the Empire Wind project.
Long Island gets the burden and none of the benefits,” he said. Blakeman is also taking aim at new lithium-ion battery storage facilities — which have been cropping up across the Big Apple to the ire of locals who fear they could spark toxic infernos in residential neighborhoods. Blakeman and his fire marshal claim the lithium-battery storage warehouses are a dangerous fire hazard.
“There’s no way to extinguish these fires. You have to let them burn out,” Blakeman said. “Such an explosion could put a whole neighborhood on fire.
” Under the Climate Act, New York must reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030 and have 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040. Rules require New York to generate 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035, 6,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2025 and build 3,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030..
