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The American wind industry faces a potentially existential threat.

President Trump’s executive order halting permits and leases for wind projects is starting to look like a potential existential threat to the industry’s future. Just don’t expect everyone to say it out loud.
On Monday, Trump issued an order pausing new federal approvals for wind projects, pending a “comprehensive assessment” of permitting practices, while opening the door to a review of existing leases and previously-issued permits subject to litigation. In the days following the order, lawyers, industry trade representatives, and professionals who work for renewable energy developers explained to me how this could impact essentially any wind project, even ones not sited on federal lands. Wind projects are just so large and impactful that it’s hard to avoid a federal permit.
Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, told me Wednesday afternoon that a pause on federal permits would impact “probably more than half” of all wind projects under development in the U.S.
“If in fact the federal government stops issuing approvals, a significant amount of the pipeline would be interrupted,” Grumet said.
Given the high costs associated with building a wind project, and the likelihood of tariffs making that situation worse, the uncertainty produced by a potential halt to permits may also be enough to cause developers to pull the plug on projects – because even if the order itself winds up tossed out in court, that could take years.
As one renewable energy professional told me anonymously, for fear of reprisal, “If we say, well we probably have the right to do this but we have to sue the government to enforce that right, it’s probably only going to get the [project] deal done 40% of the time now.” He concluded: “It’s definitely going to chill investment.”
It’s early days, and Grumet of ACP says he’s holding out hope that the new president can be walked back from the brink. He’s focusing on the possibility that people in the administration including Trump’s picks to run the Interior and Energy Departments – Doug Burgum and Chris Wright – are willing to listen and potentially help walk back a complete and total permitting shutdown.
When asked however if suing the administration may be required, Grumet said it’s a hypothetical that could come true in the worst case scenarios.
“We’re taking it seriously. But the idea that you would have a pro-business administration trying to stop private companies from taking economically appropriate action on private land is just so out of step with the role of government that we’re expecting they’re going to clarify their intent.”
Trump’s executive order is so far-reaching because wind projects regularly need federal permits and other authorizations, even if they’re sited on private or state lands.
A commonly cited federal nexus is endangered species. Opponents of wind energy have long criticized turbines for being a potential threat to birds, but it is the case that many wind projects are collocated within or near areas for rare bird migration. Cultural heritage impacts can often also be a difficulty.
One major threat I’ve been hearing about from many in the industry flew out of left field: the Federal Aviation Administration often must clear wind projects for construction. Matt Eisenson, an expert in renewables permitting at the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told me FAA approvals are required “very frequently” for wind projects because any land structure more than 200 feet tall must be approved to not be a hazard for commercial planes. And while the order didn’t cite the FAA specifically, it instructed all “relevant agencies” to wind permitting stop giving approvals related to projects, opening the door to aviation-related clearances idling on a procedural tarmac.
“It’s hard to avoid it if you’ve got anything sizable,” an attorney who works in the renewable energy industry told me, adding the total scope of impact is still unknown: “There’s nobody you could talk to who could have nearly all the answers [about Trump’s order]. And that includes developers and companies, because they don’t know either.” (It’s worth noting no industry attorney would be willing to go on the record with me because of ongoing impacts to clients.)
Then there’s the existing leases and permits. It’s easy to assume that a permit issued is a permit safe, and the Biden administration quickly rushed approvals for many wind projects, onshore and offshore, in the final days before Trump’s inauguration.
But the order left open a process to challenge existing approvals through litigation. In the offshore wind space, we’re already seeing public requests for Trump to review the leases for the MarWin project off the coast of Maryland and Delaware, and Atlantic Shores off the coast of New Jersey.
Paul Kamenar, a lawyer involved in a suit challenging Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project, says we can expect the same in his case. Kamenar is with the National Legal and Policy Center, which joined with the Heartland Institute and anti-wind group CFACT to sue the government for approving Coastal Virginia, claiming it did not consider the cumulative impacts of building the project on endangered whales.
Kamenar told me he believes the order shows Trump’s team is sympathetic to the arguments raised in the case, and he’s planning to file a request for the federal government to reconsider its permits and leasing for the project as soon as next week. Kamenar said the order provides avenues for similar challenges to many other projects.
“I think this affects all the onshore and offshore wind projects,” Kamenar said. “Some more than others. But if I were the energy company, I would be loath to continue going forward until I got clarification.”
Eisenson at Columbia told me the executive order “opened the door” to a massive range of new potential hurdles for wind development. He sees legal vulnerabilities in the executive order because there’s a history in recent case law surrounding Biden’s pauses on federal oil and gas leasing. But that’s cold comfort for an industry with such high capital costs that it describes low interest rates as its “fuel.”
“This could have a major chilling impact,” Eisenson said. “Even if the EO is unlawful, it could take years in court to invalidate an unlawful decision.”
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Much of California’s biggest county is now off limits to energy storage.
Residents of a tiny unincorporated community outside of Los Angeles have trounced a giant battery project in court — and in the process seem to have blocked energy storage projects in more than half of L.A. County, the biggest county in California.
A band of frustrated homeowners and businesses have for years aggressively fought a Hecate battery storage project proposed in Acton, California, a rural unincorporated community of about 7,000 residents, miles east of the L.A. metro area. As I wrote in my first feature for The Fight over a year ago, this effort was largely motivated by concerns about Acton as a high wildfire risk area. Residents worried that in the event of a large fire, a major battery installation would make an already difficult emergency response situation more dangerous. Acton leaders expressly opposed the project in deliberations before L.A. County planning officials, arguing that BESS facilities in general were not allowed under the existing zoning code in unincorporated areas.
On the other side, county officials maintained that the code was silent on battery storage as such, but said that in their view, these projects were comparable to distribution infrastructure from a land use perspective, and therefore would be allowable under the code.
Last week, the residents of Acton won, getting the courts to toss out the county’s 2021 memorandum allowing battery storage facilities in unincorporated areas – which make up more than 65% of L.A. County.
Judge Curtis Kin wrote in his October 14 ruling that “such expansive use of the interpretation runs contrary to the Zoning Code itself,” and that the “exclusion” of permission for battery storage in the code means it isn’t allowed, plain and simple.
“Consequently, respondents and real parties’ reliance on the existence of other interpretive memos and guidance by the [Planning] Director is beside the point,” Kin stated. “There is no dispute the Director has the authority to issue memos and interpretations for Zoning code provisions subject to interpretation, but, as discussed above, such authority cannot be used in such a way as to violate the provisions of the Zoning Code.”
The court also declared the Hecate project approval void and ordered the company to seek permits under the California Environmental Quality Act if it still wants to build. This will halt the project’s development for the foreseeable future. Alene Taber, the attorney representing Acton residents, told me she has received no indication from Hecate’s legal team about whether they will appeal the ruling.
Hecate declined to comment on the outcome.
Taber’s perspective is unique as a self-described “rural rights” attorney who largely represents unincorporated communities with various legal disputes. She told me this ruling demonstrates a serious risk regulators face in moving too fast for a host community, especially given rising opposition to battery storage in California. Since the Moss Landing fire, opposition to storage projects has escalated rapidly across the state – despite profound tech differences between more modern designs proposed today and the antiquated system that burned up in that incident.
I asked Taber if she thought California enacting a new law last week to beef up battery fire safety oversight could stem the tide of concerns about battery storage. In response, she railed against a separate statute giving energy companies – including battery developers – the ability to work around town ordinances and moratoria targeting their industry.
“Even though the county didn’t consider the community input — which it should’ve — the county process at least still allowed for communities to appeal the project. And they’re also at least supposed to consider what the local zoning code said,” Taber told me. “Local communities are now sidelined all together. They’re saying they don’t care what the concerns are. Where’s the consideration for how these projects are now being sited in high fire zones?”
I was unable to reach Los Angeles County officials before press time for The Fight, but it’s worth noting that, amid the battle over Hecate’s approval, L.A. County planning officials began preparing to update their renewable energy ordinance to include battery storage development regulation – an indication they may need new methods to site and build more battery storage. There’s no timeline for when those changes will take place.
And more of the week’s top news about renewable energy conflicts.
1. Benton County, Washington – A state permitting board has overridden Governor Bob Ferguson to limit the size of what would’ve been Washington’s largest wind project over concerns about hawks.
2. Adams County, Colorado – This is a new one: Solar project opponents here are making calls to residents impersonating the developer to collect payments.
3. Lander County, Nevada – Trump’s move to kill the Esmeralda 7 solar mega-project has prompted incredible backlash in Congress, as almost all of Nevada’s congressional delegation claims that not a single renewables project in the U.S. has gotten a federal permit since July.
A conversation with David Gahl of SI2
This week I spoke with David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, or SI2, which is the Solar Energy Industries Association’s independent industry research arm. Usually I’d chat with Gahl about the many different studies and social science efforts they undertake to try and better understand siting conflicts in the U.S.. But SI2 reached out first this time, hoping to talk about how all of that work could be undermined by the Trump administration’s grant funding cuts tied to the government shutdown. (The Energy Department did not immediately get back to me with a request for comment for this story, citing the shutdown.)
The following conversation was edited lightly for clarity.
So what SI2 funding could be cut because of the federal shutdown, and what has it been put toward?
On October 1, the Energy Department put out a list of about $7.5 billion in grants they were terminating. Approximately a week later, another larger list of grants that were slated for termination found its way into the press. There’s an outstanding question about what this other list floating around means, and only DOE can verify the document’s accuracy, but we have two projects that were on that bigger list.
The first was $2.5 million supporting research into how power companies engage communities. We were coming up with a list of community engagement innovations — the idea was to actually test, through rigorous social science research at project sites, which of these innovations produces the best outcomes. We were going to have empirical data that said, If you approach communities in this way you’re more likely to get support, and if you approach communities this other way you wouldn’t.
The second was $3 million to bring diverse stakeholders together to talk about siting and permitting reform, best practices, guidance to make development smoother. The concept there was to bring traditionally warring parties to come up with a framework and tools to help the siting process. If you can get people together to come up with best practices, you can typically move things faster.
This was an “uncommon dialogue” – there was “uncommon dialogue” before on hydropower resources – and this was related to large-scale solar facilities and conservation. It’s not location-specific, more bringing the groups together to talk about a higher level set of issues, not specific projects. Keep in mind, this is relatively small potatoes.
What was the status of that work?
It started earlier in the year and it’s been rolling along. There’s been a lot of progress made so far. People have developed work plans and are working through the issues.
If the funding is canceled, there’s also opportunity for private money to potentially step in, but it puts both initiatives in a precarious place. But to the broader point, the administration has talked about how it wants energy “abundance” and more electrons on the grid to meet growing demand. And these projects funded by the department are addressing key problems to putting electrons onto the grid. Cancellation of these grants is just a complete reversal of what they’re talking about in other forums.
How so? Help me understand how this work actually trickles down to individual project decisions.
One of the challenges with siting any kind of large-scale energy project is getting community buy-in and ensuring the permitting process moves smoothly, that parties aren’t going to be litigating against each other. So if you can come up with ways to make sure the communities feel heard and are designed according to what communities want, you can probably avoid some litigation down the road.
Do you have any indication this government supports the work you’re describing?
What they’ve made clear is they want more electrons to come onto the grid to support data centers and the advancement of artificial intelligence. Canceling grants like these … I mean, we’re talking about potentially canceling projects that make it harder to meet the goal of putting more electricity onto the grid.