Ex-PM’s thinktank urges more drilling and fewer renewables, ignoring evidence that clean energy is cheaper and better for bills

A thinktank with close ties to Saudi Arabia and substantial funding from a Donald Trump ally needs to present a particularly robust analysis to earn the right to be listened to on the climate crisis. On that measure, Tony Blair’s latest report fails on almost every point.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) received money from the Saudi government, has advised the United Arab Emirates petrostate, and counts as a main donor Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, friend of Trump and advocate of AI.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The company, long focused on cars and trucks, plans to begin manufacturing large batteries used by utilities, data centers, other businesses and homeowners.

© Jon Cherry for The New York Times

Federal agencies are delaying approvals for renewable energy projects on both federal land and private property at a time when electricity demand is going up.

© Simon Simard for The New York Times

The Trump administration is no fan of renewable energy, but it reserves special ire for wind power. Trump himself has repeatedly made false statements about the cost of wind power, its use around the world, and its environmental impacts. That animosity was paired with an executive order that blocked all permitting for offshore wind and some land-based projects, an order that has since been thrown out by a court that ruled it arbitrary and capricious.

Not content to block all future developments, the administration has also gone after the five offshore wind projects currently under construction. After temporarily blocking two of them for reasons that were never fully elaborated, the Department of the Interior settled on a single justification for blocking turbine installation: a classified national security risk.

The response to that late-December announcement has been uniform: The companies building each of the projects sued the administration. As of Monday, every single one of them has achieved the same result: a temporary injunction that allows them to continue construction. This, despite the fact that the suits were filed in three different courts and heard by four different judges.

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The court ruled that construction can restart on a wind farm off the coast of New York State. The Trump administration had ordered work to stop in December.

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Energy experts said governors and legislatures had tools to keep electricity prices from rising further, and might even be able to lower them.

© Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Construction can continue on an $11.2 billion project off the coast of Virginia, said to be 70 percent complete.

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A federal judge said the Empire Wind project off Long Island would suffer “irreparable harm” if the Trump administration continued to hold up work.

© Equinor, via Reuters

The ruling means that construction can continue on Revolution Wind, a $6.2 billion project off the coast of Rhode Island, at least for now.

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The president’s embrace of fossil fuels and withdrawal from the global fight against climate change will make it hard to keep warming at safe levels, scientists said.

© Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times

The developers of Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Empire Wind off New York are the latest to sue the Trump administration.

© Brian Snyder/Reuters