Trump casts a chill on rural wind energy

By Marc Heller | 01/31/2025 01:46 PM EST

The new administration’s hostility to wind power raises questions for alternative energy in farm country.

A cow grazes in a pasture at dawn a wind turbine rises in the distance at the Buckeye Wind Energy wind farm, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, near Hays, Kan.

A cow grazes in a pasture at dawn a wind turbine rises in the distance at the Buckeye Wind Energy wind farm, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, near Hays, Kansas. Charlie Riedel/AP

President Donald Trump says windmills are like “garbage in a field.”

Many of those fields, though, belong to a loyal Trump constituency — farmers — who rely on wind turbines to help pay the bills. They may even help crops grow, according to some research.

Trump’s Jan. 20 directive ordering a review of federal leasing and permitting for wind energy projects — and withdrawing offshore areas from such projects — didn’t directly address modest or small-scale projects on farmland. But the rhetoric behind the move raises a question for farm country: Will the federal government back away from wind power that’s helped rural America in modest but meaningful ways?

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The president made his disdain clear at a Jan. 7 news conference.

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