Since taking office, President Trump has targeted the wind power industry, putting billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs at risk.
The Trump administration has begun a broad campaign against the wind power industry, jeopardizing a growing source of energy at a time when the country is in need of additional electricity.
On Friday, the Transportation Department said it was terminating or withdrawing $679 million in federal funding for 12 projects around the country intended to support the development of offshore wind power.
That was just one in a string of moves that have thrown the wind industry into chaos, risking thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investments. As Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman wrote, “even if developers are able to challenge the legality of the administration’s actions in court and ultimately win, the delays can drive up costs and inject enough uncertainty to potentially kill wind projects.”
The president has targeted wind since he returned to office in January. During his first month in office, he issued a moratorium on federal approvals for new offshore wind projects. Since then, the administration has been subjecting wind projects to intensifying scrutiny.
During a cabinet meeting last week, the president expounded on his long-stated aversion to wind turbines. “Windmills, we’re just not going to allow them,” he said. “They’re ugly. They don’t work. They kill your birds. They’re bad for the environment.”
In 2019, we examined some of Trump’s false and misleading statements about wind power. But the president has now moved well beyond that kind of talk. By using the full force of the federal government to penalize the industry, Trump could set back the wind business years.
Why wind matters
After decades of relatively steady demand, electricity consumption is soaring, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence, the electrification of homes and transportation, and an uptick in domestic manufacturing.
Trump arrived in office declaring an energy emergency and proclaiming that his administration was going to pursue an “all of the above” energy strategy as it worked to meet rising demand.
Wind was well positioned to be a part of the mix. In recent years, wind energy has been providing a growing share of the energy in the United States. Wind turbines now provide more than 10 percent of the country’s electricity, and more than 20 percent of the electricity in some states, including Texas.
But last month, the Trump administration ordered that all construction stop on Revolution Wind, a $4 billion wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that is already mostly built. That followed earlier orders to stop work on wind farms in Idaho and New York. (The New York project was eventually allowed to proceed.)
And also last month, the Energy Department terminated a commitment to provide a $4.9 billion loan guarantee to a company building an 800-mile-long transmission line across the Midwest that, in part, was intended to transmit wind energy produced in Kansas to Indiana.
There may be more cancellations to come. A court filing from the Trump administration suggested it plans to rescind federal approvals for another wind farm off the coast of Maryland.
Along with solar installations, onshore wind farms can also be constructed relatively quickly. (Offshore wind farms are typically subject to longer review and development processes.)
But at a moment when there is a multiyear backlog for new natural gas turbines, taking wind off the table as an option for new electricity generation in the United States is likely to place additional upward pressure on electricity prices, which are already rising sharply in some states.
“There’s no upside for anyone to this decision,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, told me in an interview, referring to the cancellation of the Revolution Wind project. “The economy’s going to be hurt. Consumers are going to see prices go up. There’s massive economic waste in stalling this project that is so nearly concluded.”
In a statement, Taylor Rodgers, a White House spokeswoman, said, “President Trump is realigning government policies to meet the needs of the American people and unleash economic prosperity.”
Wind’s allies
Democrats and clean energy supporters aren’t the only ones upset about the administration’s moves. Putting a stop to a project like Revolution Wind, which grid operators were planning on, may also affect electricity reliability in dense population centers like the Northeast.
Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said at a news conference that if Revolution Wind was interrupted, “we will have an elevated risk of rolling blackouts impacting our region.”
Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore energy companies, said in a statement that disrupting Revolution Wind “could ripple across jobs, contracts and communities already benefiting from the project.”
And Brent Booker, the president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, told me that the president’s actions were harming the workers he represents.
Booker negotiated the labor agreement for Revolution Wind, as well as the labor agreement for the Keystone XL pipeline, a contentious fossil fuel project that Biden canceled with an executive order on his first day in office in 2021.
Booker said he was also upset when Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. But in that case, he noted, construction had not begun and the pipeline was already mired in legal challenges.
Revolution Wind, by contrast, had received all necessary government approvals and was nearly finished. “This project is 80 percent complete,” Booker said. “There wasn’t two million work hours completed on Keystone when we shut down. This is much worse.”
Climate law
Exxon and California spar in dueling lawsuits over plastics
Did California’s attorney general and several other groups defame Exxon Mobil when they sued the oil giant last year over its role in widespread plastic pollution?
That was the question looming over a recent hearing in federal court in Beaumont, Texas, where Exxon Mobil has countersued Attorney General Rob Bonta of California and the nonprofit groups, accusing them of mounting a conspiracy to destroy its recycling business.
Exxon’s aggressive move signaled a sharp escalation as it tries to ward off similar suits in the future.
Exxon Mobil produces polymers used to make single-use plastics and has invested millions of dollars in recycling facilities in Baytown, Texas, about an hour’s drive from the courthouse. The lawsuit took aim at the process known as advanced recycling, which Exxon says it has used to process more than 100 million pounds of plastic waste to date. — Karen Zraick
Read more.
Climate science
Scientists denounce Trump administration’s climate report
More than 85 American and international scientists have condemned a Trump administration report that calls the threat of climate change overblown, saying the analysis is riddled with errors, misrepresentations and cherry-picked data to fit the president’s political agenda.
The scientists submitted their critique as part of a public comment period on the report, which was to close Tuesday night.
The five researchers who wrote the July report were handpicked by Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and they all reject the established scientific consensus that the burning of oil, gas and coal is dangerously heating the planet. The report acknowledged that Earth is warming but said that climate change was “less damaging economically than commonly believed.” — Lisa Friedman and Sachi Kitajima Mulkey
Read more.
Extreme heat
This lab recreates hot, sweaty days to test humans
At a small laboratory tucked away in a gleaming basketball arena, I’m running on a treadmill under lamps designed to mimic the heat of the sun.
It’s almost 92 degrees. Sweat is flying off my face. I’m hooked up to machines that are tracking my internal body temperature, heartbeat and other measurements I usually don’t think about.
“I’m starting to feel really hot,” I say to the researchers huddled nearby, watching my vital signs. “I’m sweating like crazy.”
For the researchers, it’s just another day at the heat lab at the Korey Stringer Institute, where they are working to understand the effects of a warming world on the human body. — Hiroko Tabuchi
Read more.
More climate news from around the web:
* The Washington Post highlights a new study that links microplastics to Alzheimer’s-like symptoms in mice.
* Two days after a large earthquake killed more than 1,400 people in southeastern Afghanistan, an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 shook the same region, Reuters reports.
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