Trump halts wind power projects, citing ‘security’

What happened

The Interior Department yesterday said it was “pausing — effective immediately” — all “large-scale offshore wind projects under construction” in the U.S. “due to national security risks” identified by the Pentagon in “recently completed classified reports.” The announcement effectively halts five wind energy projects off the East Coast from Virginia to New England, leaving just two operational wind farms in U.S. coastal waters.

Who said what

Halting the wind farms was the “most sweeping broadsides yet against the renewable energy source” most directly in President Donald Trump’s “crosshairs,” Axios said. Trump has boosted fossil fuels and hampered renewable energy throughout his time in office, but he has been on a personal “crusade” against wind power “ever since, 14 years ago, he failed to stop an offshore wind farm visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland,” The New York Times said. Now his administration is “essentially gutting” America’s “nascent offshore wind industry.” 

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cited the classified “emerging national security risks” in a statement, but White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Trump “has been clear” that “wind energy is the scam of the century.” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D), whose constituents were among the 2.5 million households and businesses expected to benefit from the blocked wind farms, said Trump’s “erratic anti-business move” would “drive up the price of electricity” across the region. 

Trump’s “bogus ‘national security risks’” excuse will also “set back the cause of generating enough energy to meet the demands of the AI boom,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. A federal judge two weeks ago struck down Trump’s executive order blocking wind energy projects, calling it illegal, “arbitrary and capricious.” But the “administration’s decision to cite potential national security risks could complicate legal challenges” going forward, The Associated Press said.

What next?

Burgum said on Fox News he was working with wind farm companies “to see if there’s a way to actually mitigate this.” But the indefinite “pause” has already “threatened to stymie a long-debated bipartisan energy permitting bill winding its way through Congress,” Politico said, and the “rising electricity prices” from sidelining nearly complete “major new power sources” could pose a “political problem for Trump’s party.” 

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