A close-by offshore wind farm was already deliberate when Donald Trump bought coastal land in northern Scotland to develop the Trump Worldwide Golf Hyperlinks—a undertaking he envisioned as an homage to his Scottish-American mom, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.
“I’m not thrilled. I need to see the ocean; I don’t need to see windmills,” Trump advised BBC Information in Could 2006. It was the first-known instance of Trump’s years-long warfare towards wind energy.
It took one other 5 years for the Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm to provoke allowing and, in 2012 because the golf course was nearing its opening, Trump launched an all-out media and authorized assault towards the wind undertaking—a marketing campaign that proved unsuccessful. “Tourism will undergo and the great thing about your nation is in jeopardy,” Trump warned in a 2012 commercial.
Trump wrote in a 2013 Day by day Mail article that he would combat “for so long as it takes—to hell if I’ve to—and spend as a lot because it takes to dam this ineffective and grotesque blot on our heritage.” By the point he was first operating for president in 2015, Trump had tweeted negatively about wind or “windmills” greater than 130 instances.
A lot to Trump’s chagrin, the Scottish wind farm opened in 2018. However he’s carried that combat way more aggressively in his second time period as U.S. president.
Upon his return to Scotland this July, he emphasised: “We is not going to enable a windmill to be in-built america. They’re killing us”. Trump added Aug. 20 on Reality Social that he “is not going to approve” wind or photo voltaic tasks. “The times of stupidity are over within the USA!!!” he posted.
Whereas Trump could not forestall each new wind turbine put in within the U.S., he actually is making an attempt.
Other than a speedy phasedown of tax credit for wind and photo voltaic tasks within the One Large Lovely Invoice signed into legislation in July, the Trump administration has ramped up its assaults on wind—and photo voltaic—right into a full-scale warfare, together with all however banning new wind and photo voltaic tasks on federal lands and waters, holding wind generators away from highways and railroads, investigating generators for eagle deaths, and, most just lately, making it more durable for renewables to even qualify for the short-lived credit eradicated after 2027.
Doubtlessly most onerously, wind or photo voltaic tasks should now undergo three ranges of federal evaluation, together with personally by Inside Secretary Doug Burgum, who stated in August that “gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent vitality tasks maintain America again from attaining U.S. vitality dominance.” These secretary-level critiques embody many proposed on non-public land. Earlier this month, the administration canceled the huge Lava Ridge Wind Venture in Idaho, yanking permits accredited final 12 months.
Whereas Trump has lengthy despised wind generators, he’s solely made it a high political precedence in 2025. Extra wind tasks have been constructed throughout Trump’s first time period than throughout the Biden administration. It’s solely now although that U.S. energy demand is surging—due to the AI knowledge heart growth—and it’s occurring simply when renewable vitality is being handicapped.
Common electrical energy invoice prices are up 7% 12 months over 12 months as of Could, in keeping with the Division of Power, and so they’re projected to maintain rising.
“It’s a triumph of polarization over pragmatism,” American Clear Energy Affiliation CEO Jason Grumet advised Fortune. “What’s mind-boggling is that, after eliminating the subsidies, the administration has then gone on the assault with federal mandates and buckets of pink tape to actively oppose tasks being constructed.”
Govt ‘double-cross’
The last-minute compromise within the “Large Lovely Invoice” targeted on holding the renewable vitality tax credit in place for now—however shortly phasing them out.
To qualify, tasks should break floor by July 4, 2026, or be accomplished by the tip of 2027. The secret is actually on breaking floor by subsequent summer time as a result of few began after July 2026 are more likely to end by year-end 2027.
As quickly because the omnibus spending legislation was handed, the Trump administration went to work making it more durable to qualify for the tax credit—particularly what counts as breaking floor. These revised guidelines have been finalized on Aug.15.
It was once that builders solely needed to pay 5% of the prices up entrance to lock within the tax credit. As an alternative, the 5% rule is eradicated for all however small photo voltaic farms, requiring all others to exhibit that “bodily work of a big nature” has begun on or off-site, reminiscent of basis excavation.
Grumet calls it a “double-cross” to instantly change the principles after reaching a deal that was already robust on the clear energy sector. “That is principally an ‘America Final’ vitality coverage,” he stated.
The concern was the administration would change the principles much more dramatically, however some Republican senators—together with John Curtis of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa—threatened holds on confirming some Trump nominees till the principles have been launched. In any case, most new wind and photo voltaic farms are being in-built so-called pink states.
Additionally troublesome for the business are new foreign-sourcing guidelines that penalize tasks for utilizing Chinese language components in a renewables business dominated by Chinese language provide chains.
Different regulatory points are doubtlessly worse for the business too. As an illustration, Burgum’s Inside Division went a step additional on Aug. 1 to additionally embody “enhanced” critiques for energy line transmission tasks which can be deemed to assist allow wind or photo voltaic tasks.
That order got here days after the Power Division revoked a mortgage assure for the 800-mile Grain Belt Categorical transmission undertaking from Kansas to Indiana.
Christina Hayes, government director of Individuals for a Clear Power Grid, advised Fortune that the transmission coverage transfer provides extra “uncertainty” when the nation quickly wants extra energy infrastructure, particularly when energy strains are agnostic to electrical energy generated by wind or coal burning.
“There’s no sorting hack for electrons. As soon as an electron is on the system, it’s like all the opposite electrons,” Hayes stated, continuing to make a Harry Potter reference. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, you’re a Gryffindor electron, you’re a renewable electron, you’re Hufflepuff, you’re coal.’ That’s not how this works.”
Rising obstacles
Doubtlessly essentially the most insidious adjustments for wind and photo voltaic aren’t the outright coverage revisions, however the behind-the-curtains roadblocks created: federal web sites going darkish, conferences canceled, cellphone calls repeatedly unanswered.
“With the intention to allow a undertaking, you must work together with the federal authorities,” Grumet stated. “You’re a developer, and also you’ve gone by your 63 of 64 steps, and immediately you may’t get your ultimate assembly. And now future permits are going to be politicized on the cupboard secretary degree for all the pieces from the place you place a fence to the way you create a street. It’s weaponizing forms to undermine American vitality manufacturing.”
As an illustration, Hayes stated Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts contributed to the Power Division’s staffing for the Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits Program (CITAP) shrinking from about 60 folks to 6—vital for transmission siting and allowing.
Grumet likened the method to going to the Division of Motor Autos within the Nineteen Fifties-era Soviet Union. “The federal government is difficult sufficient when everyone seems to be working in the direction of options; it’s inconceivable when the federal government is working to create issues.”
All of the false claims
Trump has repeatedly known as “windmills” a inexperienced vitality rip-off and accused them of killing birds and marine life. He’s even falsely stated the noise may cause most cancers. However principally, he loathes wind generators for his or her aesthetics.
Alternatively, air air pollution from fossil fuels could be carcinogenic, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has discovered that oil pits trigger 3 times extra chicken deaths than wind generators, which have been deemed accountable for fewer than 0.01% of human-caused chicken fatalities.
Exterior of, sure, cats, the main reason behind chicken deaths is constructing and glass collisions, together with Trump’s towers in New York and all over the world. Trump’s Aberdeen golf complicated additionally was constructed on sand dunes that housed a number of species of endangered birds.
“The American public sees previous the concept that a wind blade is a carcinogen,” Grumet stated. “The problem the president actually focuses on is the aesthetics. That’s a matter of non-public opinion if the president thinks that watching a pure fuel facility is a supply of American magnificence, and watching a wind turbine is an assault on the panorama.”
So, why now? One, this Trump administration is extra full of partisan gamers who have been ready to hit the bottom operating. Two, the vitality combat more and more has turn out to be extra politically biased.
“Between 2020 and 2024, I feel the entire vitality debate grew to become extra partisan, and wind energy, specifically, bought locked into the ‘us versus them’ creativeness of the best way America works,” Grumet stated.
Sure, it’s a troublesome time for renewable vitality in America. Fewer tasks will come to fruition. The extent of that decline is unclear. However new pure gas-fired crops and nuclear services will take 5 to 10 years to construct. Retiring coal crops can have their lives prolonged, however solely quickly. New energy technology is required extra shortly, and renewables, particularly solar energy, will nonetheless fill a lot of the short-term hole—with or with out tax credit.
“We’re inexorably shifting towards a extra environment friendly, lower-carbon vitality system,” Grumet stated. “The president’s actions actually may sluggish that down for a pair years, however the path will not be going to alter.”
