Stevenson, now 75, describes himself as “a lifelong conservationist.”
Within the driveway of his Lewes, Delaware, dwelling sits the hybrid automobile he typically drives to a close by seashore. Photo voltaic panels glint atop the roof, which Stevenson custom-designed in 2013 to be on the “optimum angle” to absorb the solar. A framed newspaper article about certainly one of his cross-country bike rides hangs on the wall of his dwelling workplace, nestled alongside photographs of his seven youngsters and 19 grandchildren.
His profession has intersected with clear power — and even wind — at numerous factors.
Whereas working for DuPont within the 1980s, Stevenson helped the chemical big develop the long-lasting coatings used to make first-generation photo voltaic panels and wind turbine blades. In 1999, after leaving the corporate, he began his personal building enterprise and bought certifications in power effectivity and residential weatherization. He mentioned he finally co-founded the Delaware Inexperienced Constructing Council to advertise this sort of work.
However regardless of Stevenson’s environmentally minded profession and pursuits, he’s constructed a repute as somebody devoted to stopping, fairly than enabling, renewable power.
After promoting his building enterprise to certainly one of his sons, Stevenson grew to become occupied with shaping state insurance policies. A self-described libertarian, he discovered a dwelling round 2010 on the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware affiliate of the State Coverage Community, which the Brown College researchers name “the nation’s most outstanding community of conservative state-level assume tanks.”
Based on the D.C.-based analysis agency Vitality Coverage Institute, CRI is amongst a half dozen “entrance teams” backed by fossil-fuel pursuits that often assault renewable power of their native areas.
For a few years, Stevenson labored on a number of points at CRI, from knowledge facilities and solid-state gas cells to pipeline infrastructure and Delaware’s carbon-emissions price. His preliminary brush with offshore wind got here in 2010, when he despatched a measured letter to the Obama administration relating to Bluewater Wind, the primary proposed wind farm off the coast of Delaware. He voiced opposition to wind tax credit however acknowledged “one of many advantages of windmills” is how rapidly they are often constructed.
It wasn’t till 2017 that he centered deeply on offshore wind, and by then his stance on the power supply was extra firmly detrimental.
Plans for Skipjack Wind Farm — a 966-megawatt Danish-led undertaking slated for waters off Maryland’s shoreline with onshore stations in Delaware — have been advancing rapidly. They took Stevenson without warning. “My preliminary response was simply the excessive value,” he recalled, although he additionally anxious in regards to the generators ruining the “pristine view.”
The undertaking was led by Ørsted, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind, which had purchased the lease from the builders of Bluewater Wind. Stevenson mentioned he tried to enlist assist to struggle the corporate, turning to Washington connections he’d cast throughout his time serving on Trump’s first transition group for the Environmental Safety Company.
“I knew a lot of individuals; we had a lot of conversations,” Stevenson recalled. “They informed me that I was nuts for taking over offshore wind.”
On the time, Trump officers have been actively backing the sector. Former Inside Secretary Ryan Zinke described himself as “very bullish on offshore wind” and executed key lease auctions put forth by the Obama administration — first close to North Carolina, then close to Massachusetts. Anti-wind insurance policies wouldn’t emerge till the latter half of Trump 1.0, when Zinke’s successor, David Bernhardt, started slow-walking federal permits for offshore initiatives.
Stevenson obtained little response from his Washington connections. Undeterred, he merely led an anti-wind marketing campaign on his personal.
He attended city corridor conferences and submitted public feedback. He and fellow residents of native coastal communities organized in opposition to the wind undertaking beneath the identify Save Our Seashore View, mailing over 35,000 letters and posting continually to Fb.
The messages contained a number of deceptive statements. Impartial journalist Michael Thomas reported that the letters, for instance, “falsely claimed that the undertaking may trigger coastal residents’ property values to drop by between 20% and 30%; energy prices may rise by 400%; key industries like tourism may see their revenues fall by 50%.”
However, Stevenson’s efforts delayed the allowing course of for an onshore substation, which in flip delayed wind turbine building off the Delmarva coast from a deliberate 2022 begin date to 2026 on the earliest. In January of this 12 months, days after Trump took workplace for his second time period, Ørsted moved to refinance the undertaking, possible kicking it even additional down the street.
In the end, Stevenson mentioned, he “received the battle.”
In 2019, emboldened by his win in opposition to Skipjack Wind, Stevenson began looking out on social media platforms and in information articles for the names of different residents throughout the Northeast who have been resisting offshore wind farms. He reached out to a few of them by cellphone — “simply cold-called them,” he mentioned with a snigger.
He discovered that there have been loads of people, in addition to some small teams, protesting with little expertise. For instance, a handful of activists often called Defend Our Coast NJ didn’t know the way to set up themselves as a nonprofit entity. Stevenson mentioned he helped them do it.
Stevenson additionally began to prepare month-to-month calls amongst activists from totally different states. His attain slowly grew from Massachusetts right down to North Carolina, with the concept of spreading the ways he honed in Delaware to different states. What Stevenson would deliver them — because the Brown College researchers put it — was “political energy.” Filings present that Stevenson’s employer, the Caesar Rodney Institute, additionally accepted donations from the American Gasoline and Petrochemical Producers in each 2019 and 2020.
His community of grassroots activists advanced into the American Coalition for Ocean Safety, which made its public debut in 2021 with a press convention in entrance of the Massachusetts Statehouse. 4 different State Coverage Community assume tanks had additionally joined by then.
There, carrying a blue sport coat and flanked by maps of deliberate wind farms, Stevenson introduced that the Caesar Rodney Institute had arrange a $75,000 authorized fund to help residents alongside the east coast who wished to sue to halt offshore wind growth. He publicly set a objective of elevating $500,000 for the marketing campaign.
Stevenson would later admit that whereas the coalition’s fundraising “did fairly nicely,” it by no means reached anyplace near his monetary objective. Regardless of. It was the coalition’s relentless messaging and coordination, not a lot the cash, that might turn into its best weapon.
