President Donald Trump has called wind turbines “ugly,” claimed they drive whales “loco” and labeled their finances “a con job.”
Now, add national security to that list of grievances.
The Interior Department halted construction last month of Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project south of Connecticut and Rhode Island that is 80 percent complete. To do so, the agency invoked national security — turning to the playbook the president has used to deploy federal troops in U.S. cities and impose tariffs on a wide range of foreign imports.
The rationale is relatively simple, legal analysts say. Courts generally give the president wide latitude when it comes to national defense. The question, given Trump’s well-known antipathy toward wind, is whether courts will see the rationale as a manufactured excuse to stop a project the president doesn’t like or as a legitimate use of his authority.
“I think they’re scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “If they can’t come up with anything legitimate, they’ll wave the national security banner, but without any substance behind it.”
Wind critics have long argued massive spinning turbines degrade radar and hinder the military’s ability to detect incoming threats. The industry’s supporters say such claims are overblown, ignore the many ways to mitigate radar interference and overlook the Department of Defense’s role in identifying offshore wind development areas.
In an Aug. 22 letter announcing the work stoppage, federal regulators said they were seeking to “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.” They did not elaborate.
Interior did not respond to a request for comment. But in an interview last week on CNN, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cited radar interference and a theoretical swarm attack from “undersea drones” as two potential national security threats.
“People with, you know, bad ulterior motives to the United States would launch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm. The radar gets very distorted,” Burgum said. He proceeded to list off other concerns, like wind farms’ ability to withstand hurricanes, and alluded to the 2024 accident at Vineyard Wind, where a turbine blade detached and crashed into the ocean.
“A whole range of things,” Burgum added, “need to be reviewed that I don’t think were.”
Revolution Wind, which would generate enough electricity to power 350,000 homes, was permitted by the Biden administration in 2023. All of the project’s foundations and 45 of its turbines had been installed by the time Interior halted work. The project had been scheduled to come online next year.
The decision to stop Revolution Wind was the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to curtail wind development.
Interior has halted new leasing on federal land, revoked designated offshore wind development areas and paused work for a month on Empire Wind, a 54-turbine project off New York. Government lawyers also informed federal judges in Delaware and Maryland last month that Interior intends to revoke a permit for a planned three-phased offshore wind development that was scheduled to begin construction next year.
The April stop order on Empire Wind didn’t last; Trump lifted it after he claimed to strike a deal with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to permit two natural gas pipelines in her state.
But unlike its order for Revolution Wind, Interior did not rely on national security to pause Empire Wind. Instead, the agency asserted that the project would negatively impact commercial fishing, citing a report from NOAA that was never made public.
“The White House may have concluded that they’re less vulnerable on the national security issue,” Gerrard said. “I think they’re still going to have to come with something. The mere words ‘national security’ shouldn’t be enough.”
A series of studies, including from the Energy Department and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, have found that wind turbines can impair radar. Wind critics have seized upon those findings to argue that the industry poses a national security risk.
Emails obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request show the anti-offshore wind group Green Oceans sent Interior officials a report titled “Canceling Offshore Wind Leases,” which included a section on national security. The group has sued to stop Revolution Wind.
The government’s “leasing and interagency coordination processes seem to place the burden to deconflict use and access requirements on the national security mission, largely expecting DOD and other entities to create work arounds, or even relinquish geocapital operating capacity, to enable OSW [offshore wind] construction and operation,” the report says.
Elizabeth Knight, the group’s president and co-founder, did not respond to a request for comment.
Wind industry supporters acknowledge the potential impacts on radar. But they say most arguments made by critics ignore the many solutions for mitigating those challenges.
The Defense Department has operated a clearinghouse since 2011 to help identify suitable sites for onshore and offshore wind development that do not interfere with military radar. Revolution Wind’s location was identified by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of Interior that regulates offshore wind, after consultation with the Defense Department, according to the permit issued to the project in 2023.
Many of the issues related to radar interference can be solved by software upgrades and training, said Kirk Lippold, an analyst who was serving as commander the USS Cole when it was attacked by al Qaeda suicide bombers in 2000. He called Burgum’s concerns about an undersea drone attack “a specious argument.”
“If that were true, well then we ought to stop building airplanes. We ought to stop building piers and ships,” he said. ”So when you have an administration that makes a statement like that, it looks like an overactive imagination in search of a justification.”
This story also appears in Energywire.
