President Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail last year to halt offshore wind development on “Day 1” of his second term. In the end, he delivered the first real blow on Day 86.
The Interior Department’s decision Wednesday to halt construction of an offshore wind farm off New York represented a remarkable escalation even for a president whose disdain for wind is well known. Trump has railed against wind for years, dating back to his unsuccessful attempts to prevent 11 turbines from being built within eyesight of his Scottish golf course.
But most of his actions to date amounted to bluster. The president could label a project off New Jersey “a large scale Windmill DISASTER” on his social media site and have his EPA administrator rescind its air quality permit, but the practical impact was limited because the project was already on economically thin ice. The same could be said of his Day 1 executive order, which called for a halt on new leases and permits. Those projects were years away at best. Some might not have ever come to fruition due to economic challenges.
Wednesday was different. For all the challenges offshore wind in the U.S. has faced in recent years — skyrocketing construction costs; a high-profile accident at a project off Massachusetts; a legal onslaught from fishermen, beachfront property owners and conservative activists — a half-dozen projects have inched forward. One was even completed.
But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s directive to halt work on Empire Wind calls their future into question. The 810-megawatt project, which was permitted by the Biden administration, recently had begun offshore construction. Burgum said in a post on X that further review of the project was necessary due to information “that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
Empire Wind is being built by Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company. Onshore work began on the project last year. The company said in a statement that 1,500 people have been put to work revitalizing the old port where turbine components will be staged and electricity generated by the project will be brought ashore.
“We will engage directly with BOEM and the Department of Interior to understand the questions raised about the permits we have received from authorities,” Equinor said. “We will not comment about the potential consequences until we know more.”
Interior did not return a request for comment.
Burgum’s decision was cheered by offshore wind opponents, who for years had argued the Biden administration had approved projects without seriously considering their impacts on marine traffic, commercial fishing and the environment. Biden permitted 11 projects along the East Coast during his four years in the Oval Office.
“I think this is the start of it,” said Lisa Linowes, who leads the anti-wind group WindAction.
Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, agreed. He called Burgum’s order “a good first step” but asked for more.
“I see no reason why they should be treated special or not given the ‘Empire treatment,’ so to speak,” Burnett said. “Their permits were fast-tracked just like Empire’s were under Biden,” which he said merits reconsideration.
But industry advocates and legal observers called the decision unprecedented, arguing it would have ramifications beyond the wind industry. Normally, infrastructure projects are halted due to lawsuits, which successfully identify legal deficiencies in a project’s permit. But in this case, Empire Wind’s appears to have been stopped simply because the president didn’t like it, they said.
“This project went through an extensive, full environmental impact process that was open to the public,” said David Hayes, who served as climate adviser to former President President Joe Biden. “We’re stopping it in the middle of construction. That is a breach of good faith and process that I’ve never seen before.
“It’s an outrage,” he added. “This is not the way to do business.”
The implications extend beyond wind. The permitting process for oil and gas projects on federal land is largely the same, said Allan Marks, a retired partner at Milbank and a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment.
He noted that the Biden administration paused issuing permits for new liquefied natural gas export terminals. But that decision came after the administration already had permitted a series of export terminals. And even then, Biden never interfered with terminals that had already received permits and entered construction or operations.
American Clean Power blasted the decision, saying it would undermine Trump’s stated aim of boosting domestic energy production.
“These political reversals are bad policy, whether applied to pipelines or wind farms,” ACP CEO Jason Grumet said in a statement. “Doubling back to reconsider permits after projects are under construction sends a chilling signal to all energy investment.”
Interior’s decision also sets a potential precedent for future Democratic administrations to halt operations at those terminals.
“No one with any kind of an energy project can rely on the permits that have been issued if this administration, for whatever reason, legally or illegally, rightly or wrongly, decides that they want to call into question permits that have already been issued,” Marks said. “That should scare any investor in any energy project, not just offshore.”
Reporter Ian Stevenson contributed.
This article also appears in Energywire.
