The Trump administration is canceling plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development, the latest step to suppress the industry in the United States.
More than 3.5 million acres had been designated wind energy areas, the offshore locations deemed most suitable for wind energy development. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is now rescinding all designated wind energy areas in federal waters, announcing on Wednesday an end to setting aside large areas for “speculative wind development.”
Offshore wind lease sales were anticipated off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Maine, New York, California and Oregon, as well as in the central Atlantic. The Biden administration last year had announced a five-year schedule to lease federal offshore tracts for wind energy production.
Trump began reversing the country’s energy policies after taking office in January. A series of executive orders took aim at increasing oil, gas and coal production.
The Republican president has been hostile to renewable energy, particularly offshore wind. One early executive order temporarily halted offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and paused the issuance of approvals, permits and loans for all wind projects. In trying to make a case against wind energy, he has relied on false and misleading claims about the use of wind power in the U.S. and around the world.
The bureau said it was acting in accordance with Trump’s action and an order by his interior secretary this week to end any preferential treatment toward wind and solar facilities, which were described as unreliable, foreign-controlled energy sources.
Renewable energies such as wind and solar provide an intermittent supply of electricity when it is windy or sunny. Increasingly, batteries are getting paired with solar and wind projects to allow renewables to replace fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal, while keeping a steady flow of power when sources such as wind and solar are not producing.
European companies are developing offshore wind farms along America’s East Coast.
The Interior Department is considering withdrawing areas on federal lands with high potential for onshore wind power to balance energy development with other uses such as recreation and grazing. It also will review bird deaths associated with wind turbines, which are allowed under federal permits that consider the deaths “incidental” to energy production.
Earlier this month, the department said all solar and wind energy projects on federal lands and waters must be personally approved by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast New Jersey, applauded the administration for its actions and said they were long overdue. Opponents of offshore wind projects are particularly vocal and well-organized in New Jersey.
“It’s hard to believe these projects ever got this far because of the immensity, scale, scope and expense, compared to relatively cheap and reliable forms of onshore power,” he said Thursday. “We’re nearly there, but we haven’t reached the finish line yet.”
The Sierra Club said the administration’s “relentless obstruction of wind energy” shows it does not care about creating affordable, reliable energy for everyday Americans.
“No matter how much they want to bolster their buddies in the dirty fossil fuel industry, we will continue to push for the cleaner, healthier, and greener future we deserve,” Xavier Boatright, Sierra Club’s deputy legislative director for clean energy and electrification, said in a statement.
Attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia are suing in federal court to challenge Trump’s executive order halting leasing and permitting for wind energy projects. His administration had also halted work on a major offshore wind project for New York, but allowed it to resume in May.
The nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork, opened last year east of Montauk Point, New York.
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Story by Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press. Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
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