Maryland GOP Congressman Fighting Offshore Windmills Sees Victory on Horizon

Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s sole Republican congressman, is calling for the end to an offshore windmill project that would industrialize the state’s scenic Eastern Shore, a conservative region that depends on tourism and fisheries.

Harris has long railed against the project, having represented the 1st Congressional District since 2011. He told The Daily Signal that he thinks the windmills could damage the Eastern Shore’s appeal as both a beach seascape and a commercial fishing hotbed.

“The leading opponent is Ocean City, Maryland,” Harris said. “Because they feel they will lose attraction to tourists with these huge windmills easily visible from the beach.”

He added, “But it goes beyond that. The commercial fisheries are very worried about it for two reasons. One is, it obviously disturbs a lot of the bottom and affects the ability to commercially fish. And the other one is, they probably have an impact on search-and-rescue radar by the Coast Guard. So, it actually makes it a little more hazardous.”

Harris has seen the project slowly advance with each Democrat administration, but especially under former President Joe Biden, whose 2022 Inflation Reduction Act introduced sweeping subsidies for green energy.

“The [Barack] Obama administration started it with leasing large offshore areas for wind development,” he said. 

In 2014, during Obama’s presidency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management leased 80,000 acres of ocean for U.S. Wind to construct wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland, a major tourism hub.

“It settled down a little bit during the first Trump administration, but then in the … Biden administration, with the Inflation Reduction Act, these projects took off because now they were very lucrative for the developers, and you had an administration that was willing to fast-track permit approvals without doing their due diligence.”

As for the energy benefits of the project, Harris thinks it’s all bunk.

“It makes no sense to produce energy with offshore wind because it’s the most expensive source of energy of all the conventional sources,” he said. “It’s politically correct to do it. You know, it makes the climate alarmists feel better, but it is actually terrible national policy.”

But now, Harris welcomes developments that could put an end to the windmills project. 

On Monday, shortly after passage of the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, which undid much of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to cancel Biden-era green energy incentives.

The fiscal hawk House Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican faction that Harris chairs, pushed for those changes throughout the budget reconciliation process.

“The bottom line is if you remove federal taxpayer-subsidized credits, these projects make no financial sense whatsoever,” Harris told The Daily Signal.

 “I think the president’s executive order is the first step toward putting a stake in the heart of these projects. And I should add—a well-deserved stake in the heart,” he added.

Trump’s executive order followed last-minute talks with Freedom Caucus members who were concerned about the implementation of the big, beautiful bill’s subsidy cancellations.

“We certainly expressed our concerns with the bill as it came back from the Senate,” Harris said. “The discussion included whether or not mitigation could occur through executive action. And it does appear that, in fact, mitigation will occur through executive action.”

Another blow was dealt to the windmills project on July 3, when a U.S. district judge allowed for a lawsuit against the federal government’s approval of the project to proceed. The lawsuit was filed by the town of Ocean City, as well as groups representing fishing and business interests along the Delmarva Peninsula.

“The whole basis of that lawsuit is that the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management really didn’t do their due diligence in approving these projects because there are so many interactions with commercial fisheries, with navigation, with potential defense conflict, marine mammal effects. I mean, the list goes on and on,” Harris said.

In a statement, Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan applauded the judge’s decision.

“As we have stated for over eight years, this project threatens to devastate our tourism industry, commercial and recreational fishing sectors, and poses risks to national defense,” he said.

“It could lead to the deaths of hundreds of marine mammals, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale—all so that an Italian company can receive subsidies from the State of Maryland to produce unreliable and expensive electricity.”

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