Some legislators want to bring huge floating wind turbines to Washington’s coast and are adding funding to the state budget to help make it happen.

Notably, the proposed House Operating Budget specifies half-a-million dollars to fund an organization in Seattle called Maritime Blue that promotes floating wind turbines. That organization is headed by Joshua Berger who was Jay Inslee’s Maritime Sector Lead.

I spoke with Lauren Donovan of Q13 TV in Seattle about the budget proviso. "Wasting money this way doesn’t help the environment," I noted. The public was "promised that paying these taxes would help us reduce CO2 emissions, and then they find out that the money is actually going to political allies."

It is a good example of how funding that is purportedly intended to help reduce the state’s climate impact is funneled to insiders and political allies.

The proposed House Operating Budget also includes $816,00 for the Department of Ecology to study “the state's authority relevant to the potential siting and permitting of floating offshore wind energy projects,” and an additional $731,000 for “a tribal-state science advisory panel to guide the advancement of our scientific understanding of potential ecological impacts of floating offshore wind projects.” In total, the proposed House budget provides more than $2 million to study and promote putting wind turbines off the coast of Washington.

The proposed Senate Operating Budget does not include the funding for Maritime Blue but does provide $550,000 for the Department of Ecology to study permitting and another $500,000 for the tribal-state science advisory panel.

According to Lazard, an organization that publishes an annual estimate comparing the cost of various energy sources, offshore wind is routinely listed as the most expensive form of wind, including onshore wind with storage backup. It is also more expensive than utility-grade solar.

Additionally, a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that wind speeds are lower off the Washington coast that many other places in the United States which could increase the cost per megawatt hour.

Floating wind turbines are enormous. For example, one story from CNN includes a graphic showing the diameter of the blades at 774 feet, more than twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, and about 70 stories tall. With the curvature of the Earth, the turbines could be seen more than 30 miles away.

Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing “for wind energy leasing all areas within the Offshore Continental Shelf (OCS).” That would include the area off the coast of Washington state.

With the legislature proposing the largest tax increases in state history and threatening to cut worthwhile programs, speculative projects that fund political allies, like this one, should be the first to be discarded.

With taxpayers struggling with inflation and rising costs from tariffs and other challenges, they deserve to have tax dollars spent more effectively and efficiently than the cronyism and bureaucracy building proposed here.