Trump Admin vs Wind Power…..

Since April, the Defense Department has halted all military reviews for wind projects, stalling dozens of projects nationwide.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Pentagon to lift its freeze on reviewing onshore wind projects and to end some of the delays that have brought U.S. wind power development to a standstill.

Judge Karin Immergut of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy groups filed against the Defense Department. The groups argued that the Trump administration has unlawfully delayed dozens of wind projects across the country by halting military reviews that were once considered routine.

In her ruling, Judge Immergut, who was appointed by President Trump, said that the renewable energy groups were likely to prevail on the merits and that the Pentagon had violated legal deadlines when it stopped its reviews. She ordered the agency to resume reviewing wind projects and to report back to the court on its progress every 30 days while the broader legal case played out.

Since April, the Pentagon has halted all military reviews of proposed wind farms, which are meant to ensure that turbines don’t interfere with radar or flight paths. While the Trump administration has cited national security as a rationale, the coalition of renewable energy groups said the delays were an unjustified tactic to thwart wind power, a technology that Mr. Trump has derided for decades…..

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It was the fifth such deal struck by the administration to get companies to drop offshore wind projects.

The Trump administration will pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana, the company announced on Thursday.

It was the fifth such deal the government has reached this year to halt the development of offshore wind, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has derided for decades.

Under the agreement, RWE will voluntarily surrender three leases it owned for wind farms in federal waters. Those projects were in the early stages of development and had little chance of moving forward under the Trump administration, which has halted all federal permitting for offshore wind.

The government would reimburse RWE roughly what the company had paid for the leases under the Biden administration. The settlement would also resolve any legal disputes over the leases, the company said. The company will invest about the same amount in new natural gas projects in the United States, it said.