Trump halts coastal wind farm projects
The administration of President Donald Trump on Monday halted five wind farm projects off the East Coast, including one described as the nation’s largest wind-energy project in development, citing national security concerns.
The government paused federal leases for projects including Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, under development by Dominion Energy and including 176 turbines. A Dominion statement said the project, set for completion in 2026, was necessary to meet escalating energy needs created by factors including Northern Virginia’s growing hub of data centers.
Those centers are increasingly being developed nationwide to support growing use of artificial intelligence and related technologies, and Northern Virginia has among the largest concentrations in planning or construction. Dominion said stopping the coastal Virginia project “will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s important war fighting, AI and civilian assets,” while driving up energy costs.
The government also paused leases on four other wind farm projects now under construction off the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York’s Long Island. A U.S. Interior Department statement said the government found that turbine blades and “highly reflective towers” create risks of radar interference.
The Interior Department said the pause will let the federal government “work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.”
Ellison personally backs Paramount bid for Warner
Paramount Skydance Monday said billionaire and Oracle founder Larry Ellison is personally guaranteeing a large chunk of the financing that Paramount plans to deploy in its proposed hostile takeover of rival media giant Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount, led by Ellison’s son David, said the deal would now include the elder Ellison’s personal guarantee of about $40.4 billion in equity. Paramount is seeking to address concerns of the Warner board, which last week rejected Paramount’s $108 billion bid for the entire company, including large production studio holdings and cable TV channels.
Officials of Warner, who have leaned toward a proposed $83 billion sale of its streaming and production assets to Netflix, did not immediately respond to a request from CoStar News to comment. Any sale transactions would require shareholder and regulatory approvals.
“Paramount has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to acquiring WBD,” David Ellison said in a statement from Paramount. “We expect the board of directors of WBD to take the necessary steps to secure this value-enhancing transaction and preserve and strengthen an iconic Hollywood treasure for the future.”
Online job postings decline
Online job postings declined in November, reflecting a general slowing of hiring across many industries in recent months, according to the latest Conference Board tracking.
The economic research group’s online help-wanted index, compiled with data firm Lightcast, found the volume of job postings declined 0.3% from the prior month and dropped 4.8% from a year earlier. Data reflects postings counted on online job sites, corporate job boards, social media and other non-print media.
The latest available government data, released this month, showed overall U.S. job openings totaled about 7.7 million at the end of October, essentially unchanged from the prior month. Openings have fallen sharply since peaking at 12.1 million in March 2022, when the economy was recovering from the pandemic, according to Labor Department figures.