How The Wind Industry Misread Trump

The day after President Donald Trump halted construction of a $5 billion wind project off the New York coast, the nation’s top offshore wind developers gathered for a regularly scheduled strategy session in Washington.

The mid-April meeting quickly became heated.

Michael Brown, an outspoken Scotsman who leads the developer Ocean Winds, expressed anger that the industry’s main trade association would not join a blue-state lawsuit challenging Trump’s freeze on offshore wind permitting. American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet pushed back, saying the industry should preserve its political capital at a time when Congress was gearing up to eliminate former President Joe Biden’s clean energy tax credits.

The pair “were shouting at one another,” said one person at the meeting, who like most industry figures quoted in this story was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive business and political matters. Another attendee described it as “definitely contentious.” A third called it one of several confrontations among industry members over how to respond to Trump.

“I can't even believe that that just happened,” one attendee recalled thinking.

In the end, the clean power group sat out the suit. But Trump’s assaults on wind only accelerated.

The April meeting crystalized how Trump has pushed America’s offshore wind industry to the breaking point — and how the industry has struggled to react to a president who has said over and over that he opposes its very existence.

Since Trump returned to the White House, his regulators have moved to withdraw permits for six offshore wind projects along the East Coast and halted construction of two others, including one south of New England that was 80 percent complete. He has also wiped out federal tax credits supporting wind and solar, while his agencies have opened reviews of the wind industry’s national security implications and alleged health hazards and erected barriers to turbine projects on both water and land.

The uprooting of wind projects is especially striking at a time when political leaders from both parties are calling for a massive increase in electricity generation nationwide, citing rising consumer prices and the soaring power demands of data centers. And the ferocity of the president’s attacks stunned executives who had assumed they could work with him, even after a 2024 campaign in which Trump baselessly alleged that wind power causes cancer and has killed hundreds of whales.

Some assumed that Trump’s sensibilities as a businessman would prevent him from ripping up permits for multibillion-dollar energy projects that were already under construction.

“The industry was surprised by the level of aggression and opposition that the administration launched on Day One,” ACP’s Grumet said in an interview, noting that the industry had endured a less brutal environment during Trump’s first four years in the White House. The U.S. installed 38 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity in Trump’s first term, compared with 35 gigawatts during Biden’s presidency, according to a POLITICO review of federal statistics.

“We built more wind under President Trump than under President Biden,” said Grumet, a self-described centrist who has courted Republicans and clashed with Democrats and environmentalists since becoming the trade group’s leader three years ago.

Other wind industry officials had been far less optimistic. “I would say that many of us knew that if Trump won, we were dead on day one,” said one former industry executive.

Grumet did not answer questions about his April exchange with Brown, Ocean Winds’ CEO for North America. An ACP spokesperson said the group does not comment on internal deliberations.

Brown said in a statement that he always approaches ACP’s offshore wind leadership meetings with the goal of presenting Ocean Winds’ positions “directly and openly, with an aim to drive consensus and achieve, where possible, common industry goals.”

The White House says no one should have been shocked by Trump’s actions.

“President Trump has been extremely transparent: wind energy is the scam of the century,” spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement.

“Reversing the Green New Scam was a very popular promise President Trump made on the campaign trail to the American people, who were tired of the Left’s radical and expensive climate agenda,” she added. “President Trump issued very direct policy guidance on offshore wind on day one, which the administration has been working diligently to carry out.”

Trump denounces wind power just about every chance he gets, including during the White House’s July 4 picnic for military families, his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, last month's U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, and numerous posts on his social media network, Truth Social.

"Wind is the worst," Trump said Tuesday night at a rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. "That's a scam. They ruin your valleys. They ruin your peaks. And [it's] the most expensive energy."

‘A destruction of the industry’

This portrait of the offshore wind industry’s year under Trump is based on interviews with more than a dozen offshore wind executives and lobbyists and an administration official.

During the Biden era, the idea of erecting turbines along the nation’s coasts symbolized a vision of greening the economy, easing the threat of climate change and creating a new generation of manufacturing jobs. But now, unraveling the industry has come to represent Trump’s push for a rapid ramp-up of fossil fuels, which would include opening wide stretches of the shoreline to oil and gas drilling.

Overnight, the United States’ appeal to wind developers worldwide has vanished.

“There is no one in the world right now that is looking to do a wind project in the United States,” one industry lobbyist told POLITICO.

“What you're seeing,” remarked another executive, “is a destruction of the industry."

Another executive, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch, told POLITICO journalists in Berlin this fall: “The American offshore wind market currently does not exist.”

At the same time, recent months have revealed limits to Trump’s campaign to crush offshore wind.

In September, a federal judge overturned the Interior Department’s decision to halt construction of a nearly completed wind project south of New England. Unlike other lower court rulings on Trump’s use of tariffs and the deployment of the National Guard, the administration did not appeal the decision. And on Monday, a separate federal judge declared Trump’s permitting freeze unlawful, handing a major victory to Democratic states in the case that Brown had argued the wind industry should join.

Meanwhile, staffers at the White House and Interior Department are discussing a proposal that would allow five offshore wind projects under construction to reach completion, according to three people familiar with the administration’s thinking. They include the country’s largest project, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, which could generate enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes, and a pair of massive projects on either shore of Long Island that would collectively supply more than 1 million homes.

Yet even that approach would allow the administration to revoke permits for other projects approved by the Biden administration that have yet to start construction. Just last week, the administration asked a federal judge to send an already-issued permit for an offshore wind project near Massachusetts back for further review.

All three people stressed that Trump himself has yet to sign off on the idea, noting he could easily demand that all projects under construction be shut down.

Even so, the mere fact that the administration is discussing the idea internally underscores the complicated future facing offshore wind companies in the United States. The five wind farms under construction would rank among the largest renewable energy projects ever built in the United States — one of which, Coastal Virginia, has the vocal support of some key Republicans. If completed, the five projects would represent the culmination of a more than two-decade campaign to break into the American market.

Already, wind produced more than 10 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2024. Last year, wind, solar and batteries accounted for an estimated 93 percent of the new power added to the U.S. grid, according to a POLITICO review of federal data.

But it's unclear if any additional offshore wind projects will ever be built, regardless of what Trump decides. Even if they are, the mere attempt to repeal their permits has shaken wind companies’ faith in the U.S. market. Some executives said their companies would be wary of investing in the U.S. in the future.

After Interior halted Empire Wind off the Long Island coast in April, its Norwegian developer Equinor estimated that the stoppage cost it $50 million a week. Similarly, the two companies behind the joint venture building Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project south of New England, told a federal court that a monthlong stoppage issued in August cost their project $70 million.

Both orders were ultimately lifted, but the long-term damage in the eyes of many companies was done. Ørsted, the Danish offshore wind giant and one of the two companies building Revolution Wind, has said it intends to shift its focus to Europe and Asia after completing its two U.S. projects under construction. Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, the CEO of the Portuguese-based EDP Renewables, said last month that his company’s American offshore wind projects were “in hibernation.” EDP and the French developer Engie are the two companies behind Ocean Winds.

Not even the prospect of Trump someday leaving office is brightening wind companies’ view of the U.S. market.

“It seems impossible right now, that in a world where you have four-year presidential windows, that you could get an offshore wind project from complete pause to a point where you can make an investment decision, where you can be confident that you're not getting a stop-work order halfway through construction,” said the industry executive worried about the “destruction of the industry.”

Singled out

Offshore wind is hardly alone. The president has taken a wrecking ball to the entirety of Biden’s climate and energy agenda, signing a sweeping budget law that aggressively phases out clean energy tax credits, halting permits for high-profile solar projects in the West and imposing new regulatory burdens that onshore wind developers worry will derail other projects.

No industry has endured Trump’s wrath quite like offshore wind, however.

“I think what's happening now is a reflection of one person's very specific views about offshore wind,” said Liz Klein, a former Biden administration official who led offshore wind efforts as director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Internal divisions within the renewable industry have hampered its ability to respond to Trump’s attacks — and the April spat between Ocean Winds’ Brown and the American Clean Power Association’s Grumet reflected the split, people who witnessed that exchange said.

Along with offshore wind, ACP’s membership includes companies that develop solar, battery and onshore wind projects. The group’s board feared that a legal battle over offshore wind could cost the broader industry support from moderate Republican lawmakers who could defend the clean energy tax credits in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

That support yielded mixed results. Moderate Republicans in the Senate helped defeat a plan by conservatives to impose an excise tax on renewable energy projects, but agreed to the Trump budget law’s rapid phase-out of the IRA tax credits.

Offshore wind companies were also divided over how to respond to Trump.

One developer, Ocean Winds, filed court paperwork supporting a lawsuit by 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia challenging the president’s permitting freeze. The company said it had spent $600 million developing its SouthCoast Wind project off Massachusetts and called the freeze part of the administration’s attempt “to dismantle the entire offshore wind industry.”

But most companies with projects under construction sought to avoid direct confrontation with Trump. Too much money had been invested, they reasoned, to risk the administration shutting down a project.

Even after Interior shut down Empire Wind, a 54-turbine project south of Long Island, Equinor chose to negotiate with the administration. The strategy reflected Equinor’s desire to protect its extensive oil and gas holdings on federal lands in the U.S., and its unique ownership structure. The company’s largest shareholder is the Norwegian government, meaning it can call on lobbying firepower few other firms can match.

Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, a former secretary general of NATO, raised the stoppage with American officials when he visited the White House in April.

But most of all, Equinor had strong backing from New York state, which could give Trump something he desperately wanted: a pair of new natural gas pipelines.

Trump lifted the order in May after claiming to strike a deal with Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to permit two gas pipelines in her state. Hochul denied any such bargain but said the state would permit pipeline projects that met its regulations. The state approved a first project last month.

A trip with consequences

The decision to halt Empire Wind was one of the first signs that the wind policies of Trump’s second term would be dramatically different from those of his first. But the administration’s efforts reached new heights over the summer after Trump traveled to Scotland for a diplomatic summit with European leaders.

The trip included a stop at Aberdeenshire, the site of one of Trump’s Scottish golf courses. Nearly a dozen offshore wind turbines tower on the horizon, a visual reminder of the unsuccessful decade-long campaign Trump waged before he was president to prevent their construction.

“Windmills are a disgrace,” Trump told reporters during the trip. “They hurt everything they touch.”

When the president got home, a regulatory blitz followed.

Within a month, Interior issued regulations rescinding designated wind energy areas on the Outer Continental Shelf and announced its intention to pull back permits for three projects that had yet to start construction. The Commerce Department opened its tariff investigation into imported wind components. The Department of Transportation canceled $679 million in grants intended to aid the sector’s development. The Energy Department withdrew a conditional $716 million loan for offshore transmission development in New Jersey.

The flurry was capped off by Interior’s August decision to halt work on Revolution Wind.

“He got back from Scotland. It reminded him how much he hated these windmills and he asked why the hell they haven't been shut down yet,” said one of the people familiar with the White House’s deliberations.

For all the conflict, the three people in the industry said they see a growing appreciation within the White House and Interior that it would be time consuming, bruising and potentially unsuccessful to fight projects that have started construction. Those disputes could detract from advancing the administration’s other priorities, such as promoting offshore oil and gas development and deep-sea mining.

Even if he lets a few wind farms go forward, the president could still claim a political victory by saying he has stopped more from being built, said the person familiar with the White House’s deliberations. But for Trump, a more visceral factor could prove more important.

“He really just hates wind,” the person said.

Ben Lefebvre contributed to this report.