WASHINGTON — For years, President-elect Donald Trump has furiously criticized renewable energy sources, including offshore wind farms.

To freeze the offshore wind industry, Trump asked Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) to draft an executive order — something presidents issue without action from Congress — on the topic, Van Drew said.

“I’ve spoken with the president about the wind turbines, and he told me to have my people draw up an executive order. We got it done in forty-eight hours,” Van Drew said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News last week. His office, Van Drew said, passed the text on to officials within the Trump transition team including Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick for Interior Department secretary.

The executive order would halt offshore wind activities for six months as the federal government reviewed the industry, Van Drew said.

“They liked it a lot, at an initial glance,” Van Drew said. “I expect an executive order in the first couple of months.”

It’s unusual

A spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not reply to a request seeking to confirm Van Drew shared an executive order with incoming officials.

It is very common for members of Congress to write letters to presidents or broach a particular issue with them in person, though drafting an executive order is comparatively unusual.

As humans burn fossil fuels at a perilous pace, the next Trump administration is raring to slash environmental regulations and double down on fossil fuels — the fuel sources that heat Earth.

Last year was the hottest in U.S. history, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.

After President Joe Biden recently banned offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters for all the Eastern Seaboard, most of the Pacific Coast and parts of the Gulf of Mexico, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration would embrace oil drilling.

Trump: ‘No windmills’

“Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill,” Leavitt said.

Taking reporters’ questions last week, Trump falsely claimed wind turbines “obviously” kill whales, though there is no proof of that.

“We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Trump said.

Van Drew has long feuded with the Biden administration over offshore wind development, holding multiple public hearings on the topic.

During his first term, Trump, who denies the scientific fact that humans are overheating the planet, withdrew from an international climate agreement, named former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the Environmental Protection Agency and called the climate crisis a “big hoax.”

Credit: (AP Photo/David Goldman)

In January 2017, his first administration took down federal climate websites and scores of databases from public view minutes after he was sworn in.

In 2020, he also blamed state officials in California, where wildfires now rage around Los Angeles, for forest fires and threatened to block federal aid to the state.

NJ’s energy sources

Within New Jersey’s borders, a tiny sliver of the state’s electricity comes from wind. The top sources of electricity are natural gas (about 49%) and nuclear (roughly 42%), according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But many Great Plains states like Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota, along with Texas, have become hotbeds for wind power in recent years, with wind serving as the No. 1 or No. 2 source of electricity.

Drilling off the New Jersey coast has long been a remote possibility. No significant oil or gas sources were discovered after exploratory wells were punched in the ocean floor in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

One offshore wind project the Trump administration may threaten is the Atlantic Shores South project that received approval in October.

The executive order, Van Drew said, would create a “six-month moratorium, let the Interior Department, along with other departments, review the environmental issues, review the ratepayer issues, review the national-security issues, review the fishing issues.” Ratepayer is the technical term for an electric utility customer, like a person or a company.

“There’s some real fault to be found, the way those leases were granted, and it needs to be stopped, reviewed,” he said.

Van Drew vs. offshore wind

Van Drew has long feuded with the Biden administration over offshore wind development, holding multiple public hearings on the topic, including one last summer in Brigantine.

“The current administration wants this no matter how much it takes, how much it costs or how much harm it does,” Van Drew said at that event.

The Interior Department oversees energy leases on federal land and in federal waters, managing a portfolio of fossil energy sources, like coal and oil, and renewables, such as offshore wind.

“I’m all for it,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th) when he heard of Van Drew’s draft executive order.

In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, Smith criticized offshore wind turbines as “ocean wind monstrosity poles, which are the size of the Chrysler Building.”

Burgum’s Senate confirmation hearing is Tuesday in Washington. Neither Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) nor Andy Kim (D-NJ) are on the committee that will vote on Burgum’s confirmation before a full Senate vote.

— Michael Sol Warren contributed reporting.