US President Donald Trump suggested there are limits in his campaign to thwart wind power, even as his administration moves to halt the installation of turbines in farmland and coastal waters.
“We’re not allowing any windmills to go up unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago,” Trump said Tuesday during a White House meeting with cabinet officials.
Trump’s comment underscores a potential distinction in the administration’s approach to federally permitted wind projects, with more scrutiny — and risk — heaped on ventures that have relatively recent authorizations.
Trump has a deep, long-running dislike of wind farms he’s derided as ugly, bird-killing monstrosities. But in recent weeks his administration has moved more aggressively to restrict their construction, including by blocking projects from obtaining rural development business loans, halting construction of a nearly completed Orsted A/S venture near Rhode Island and moving to invalidate the permit for another planned project near Maryland.
The administration has focused scrutiny on offshore wind projects where it has unique power; the ventures are planned in federal waters managed by the Interior Department and depend on a slew of US government authorizations. Under former President Joe Biden, the US approved 11 of them.
Trump reiterated his opposition to wind power Tuesday while scoffing at solar arrays he described as “big ugly patches of black plastic that comes from China” and are marring farmland. He didn’t elaborate on what kinds of government wind commitments would be too old to warrant changes now.
But the Trump administration in May lifted an earlier stop-work order that for weeks suspended construction of the Equinor ASA’s Empire Wind 1 project near New York. The Interior Department issued a similar stop-work order Friday to the Orsted A/S Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island, prompting New England’s grid operator to warn the halt threatens electric reliability and could boost consumer costs in the region.
While the stop-work orders focus on ongoing construction, the Trump administration’s separate planned move against a US Wind project near Maryland poses a much bigger threat to the $6 billion venture because it would invalidate a key federal permit.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum previously had said legal considerations make it difficult to stop some planned wind projects. And he’s suggested a bifurcated approach to the government’s review, with existing projects treated differently than those that are proposed.
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