Donald Trump promised energy abundance. Instead, in his first week in office, he pushed sweeping restrictions on wind energy production — both onshore and offshore.
Republicans have long called for an “all of the above” approach to energy production. Trump’s nominees for the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior, Chris Wright and Doug Burgum, respectively, echoed the pitch at their confirmation hearings just last week. Now, Republicans appear to be rewriting the agenda in real time, leaving the clean energy industry in a lurch.
“We were all excited to hop into the energy abundance party,” said Jason Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, at an energy forum Thursday. “It is discouraging to get to the party and the first game is musical chairs.”
Trump’s order restricting wind was such a surprise that some Republicans in Congress negated its actual breadth.
“No, I think the part of the executive order that I read has to do with offshore,” Rep. Andy Harris said Wednesday when asked about the provision pausing all permits for onshore wind projects on federal lands. An offshore wind farm just gained federal approvals off the coast of Maryland and Delaware and is a key piece of the states’ energy agenda.
New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, who has co-sponsored multiple amendments calling for investigations into the effects of turbines on radar systems and marine life, also only focused on the offshore part of the order.
“I think the real focus at the end of the day will be on offshore,” Smith told NOTUS. “We’re talking about the water ones. … No one’s saying we get rid of all the land-based ones, and there’s a lot of them.”
Trump immediately ceased all permitting for new offshore wind, paused the issuance of federal permits for onshore wind and ordered a review of all existing permits for both types of wind power. He also singled out the largest wind project under development on federal lands, setting an immediate moratorium on activity on the Lava Ridge project in south central Idaho.
Even conservative energy policy advocates said his Day One policies flew in the face of the energy agenda Trump and Republicans have pitched.
“The concern from the pro-energy abundance movement is that it becomes a lever to deepen the resource wars that we’ve seen between Democrats and Republicans,” Nick Loris, vice president of public policy at C3 Solutions, said.
The “resource wars” appear to have already begun. Harris ultimately praised the order as an opportunity to increase natural gas production.
“[Wind] is an incredibly expensive way to make electricity. Maryland sits on a natural gas pipeline … we should build natural gas generators that will give us a stable baseline energy production in Maryland,” the Maryland Republican said.
Many Republicans have since defended Trump’s order, specifically carving out wind energy as the exception to the “all of the above” strategy. Like Harris, they complained it was too expensive and unsightly.
“‘All of the above’ has an asterisk at the bottom now,” Idaho’s Sen. Jim Risch told E&E News. “All the above, except wind.”
Wind isn’t the only asterisk in Trump’s first moves, however. His declaration of an energy emergency also excluded wind and solar from its definition of energy sources.
Wind is a key source of American electricity, providing about 10% of all electricity generation in the United States in 2023 and is expected to grow by 11% through 2025, second only to solar power for new sources of generation in the U.S. Most of that power comes from land-based wind; offshore wind power plants are in the earlier stages of technological development, with the first commercial offshore wind power plant in the U.S. only delivering electricity to New York beginning last year.
“Preventing the growth of wind generation also means driving up the price of natural gas,” said Daniel Shawhan, an economist at Resources for the Future, citing his recent research into the costs of offshore wind generation. “Impeding the development of offshore wind farms would mean higher prices for consumers and higher energy bills.”
Coastal states with clean energy commitments have pinned their hopes on offshore wind, as those areas are hard to supply with clean energy — or really any new sources of generation — on land. Even Virginia, with an energy leader frequently skeptical of the renewables agenda, has plans underway for a large offshore farm.
“Offshore wind farms are valuable because they provide power to coastal areas that are otherwise difficult to supply with affordable power, reduce generation from gas and drive down prices,” Shawhan said.
Dominion Energy, which is building the offshore farm in Virginia, told NOTUS that it is “confident” that its offshore farm will be completed on schedule. “Bipartisan leaders agree it has been an economic boom for Virginia, creating thousands of jobs and stimulating billions in economic growth, while providing consumers with reliable and affordable energy,” Jeremy Slayton, a spokesperson, said.
“Any operational delay that could be caused by this order will adversely impact not only the Ocean State’s economy, but also our critically important Act on Climate goals,” wrote Olivia DaRocha, the press secretary for the governor of Rhode Island, in response to questions from NOTUS about the offshore farm under construction off the coast.
The administration cited harm to birds, whales and other wildlife as one reason for the pause on all new permits, a fact that appeared to enrage even the Center for Biological Diversity, which has frequently sued to try to stop large wind projects for the harms that they cause to the environment.
“The biggest thing that the wind executive order highlights is the utter hypocrisy of the administration,” said Brendan Cummings, CBD’s conservation director, citing how the administration is also gutting 50 years of environmental rules in a different executive order, the same laws that the CBD uses to try to defend wildlife protections with wind projects.
Democrats from the country’s biggest wind-potential states also called the order hypocritical.
“To unilaterally and categorically stop projects is a real detriment to our capacity to build the domestic energy supply, but also really undermines our capacity to grow good-paying, often union jobs,” said Rep. Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, which is one of the top five energy importing states in the nation. Delaware has plans to draw energy from the same offshore farm off Maryland’s coast.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS. Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.