Ron DeSantis lobbied for windmill ban, records show

Aides to Florida's Republican governor helped write legislation banning offshore wind energy in Florida — a state that has no offshore wind energy anyway.

Photo credit: Lamoix

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Shortly before Florida lawmakers finished up their annual legislative session earlier this month, they voted to ban offshore wind energy from the state.

It was never all that clear why the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature felt the need to cancel windmills. There are no operational wind farms in Florida, and the sponsors of the legislation admitted it was highly unlikely someone would want to build one any time soon.

But there was someone lobbying for the wind ban from behind the scenes: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Aides to the Republican governor helped write the proposal and pushed lawmakers to include it in a broader energy bill (House Bill 1645) that was already moving through the Legislature, according to emails obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility and fossil fuel industry watchdog group. EPI shared the records with Seeking Rents.  

A deputy chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis sent draft legislation banning offshore wind energy to Sen. Jay Collins (R-Tampa).

DeSantis wanted to ban more than offshore wind farms, too. One document that his office shared with the Florida Senate recommended that lawmakers “fully prohibit any wind energy technology in this state.”

It’s not clear why DeSantis decided to target wind energy. His office declined to answer questions about the bill, which the governor has not yet signed into law. The lawmakers who sponsored the legislation — Sen. Jay Collins (R-Tampa) and Rep. Bobby Payne (R-Palatka) — declined to answer questions, too.

But it’s possible that DeSantis, who crashed out of the 2024 presidential campaign but is apparently plotting another run in 2028, plans to use wind energy as yet another liberal Boogeyman that he can claim to have vanquished in Florida — much the way the governor also attached himself mid-session to a bill banning the sale of lab-grown meat. Wind energy has become a popular target on the right, particularly for followers of former President Donald Trump.

In fact, shortly after Florida lawmakers gaveled their 2024 session to a close, DeSantis’ press office issued a list of highlights that included both the energy legislation and the cultivated meat ban under a section titled, “Stopping the Woke.”

A screenshot from a document Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office sent Sen. Jay Collins (R-Tampa) recommending changes to proposed energy legislation.

In some respects, bans like these are more political theatre than serious policy.

Much like there are no restaurants in Florida serving their customers meat cultivated from animal cells, Florida has “has no significant wind energy resources, onshore or offshore, and the state has no utility-scale wind-powered generating capacity,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s because Florida — and the rest of the southeastern U.S. — is a “low-wind zone” that lacks the sustained wind speeds needed to turn large wind turbines.

In fact, even the lawmakers supporting the wind ban didn’t seem to take it all that seriously.

During one exchange on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives, Payne told his fellow lawmakers that wind energy “makes no sense” in Florida because wind farms cannot be profitably built at scale right now.

“It doesn’t work in the state of Florida,” said Payne, who once managed a coal-fired power plant in central Florida. “The return on investment for stakeholders is very bad.”

Payne was then asked whether new technology might emerge in the future that makes wind turbines financially viable in Florida.

“If we see a profitable opportunity in 10 years, we’ll probably repeal the wind energy pieces of this bill,” Payne responded.

But while Florida’s wind ban may be pointless, that does not mean it is painless.  

For instance, the legislation also prohibits transmission cables that could connect to wind farms further out at sea. That could complicate future development of options such as floating wind turbines in federal waters, beyond view from Florida’s coasts.

Alissa Jean Schafer, a research and communications manager at the Energy Policy Institute, called the wind ban a “political stunt” that is part of a larger effort by Florida Republicans to demonize green and renewable sources of energy while propping up fossil fuel interests.

In that sense, the wind ban is a perfect fit within HB 1645, which would also erase most references to climate change in state law while also making it much easier for the gas industry to build more pipelines and storage facilities in Florida.

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“The bill sponsor stated in debate that his goal was to ensure that everyone who wanted gas would have access to it, but at the same time, the time bill prevents anybody who wants wind energy from having that option,” Schafer said.

And while Florida doesn’t have any large-scale wind facilities, it does have jobs within the industry supply chain.

For example, one company — BlueWind Technologies in Pensacola — manufactures covers for wind turbine known as “nacelles.” The nearly five-year-old startup employs about 100 people.

Imposing a politically motivated ban on wind energy could push future supply-chain investments to other states that aren’t so needlessly hostile to the industry, said Henry Kelley, a co-founder and executive at BlueWind who drove to Tallahassee during the session to testify against the wind ban.

“While the wind industry is huge and booming, there are only a handful of companies in the world that make blades, only a handful of companies in the world that make the stands, only a handful of companies that make the nacelles…and so on,” Kelley said. “The Florida Legislature told several of the key components manufacturers in the world supply chain that they’re not welcome in Florida.”

But, hey, at least Florida is stopping the woke.