In September, the Trump administration told a reporter that the president directed the Pentagon to finally process wind projects through routine airspace approvals as required under a court order. By doing this, it created the appearance of real headway and good faith in talks with Democrats in Congress on energy permitting legislation before the November midterm elections.
But the White House’s assurances are not what they seem.
All of the projects the administration has reportedly advanced over the past week are repowerings, meaning they’re only upgrades of existing projects, and two of the “projects” they’ve advanced were just two individual turbines, the American Clean Power Association on Tuesday told members involved in litigation with the administration.
Over the course of his presidency, the president’s team has turned what was once a sleepy bureaucratic check for radar or flight interference into a weapon against wind energy in the United States. You need Federal Aviation Administration clearance for any structure above 200 feet in the air and that process includes a Pentagon review. By claiming wind projects suddenly needed new scrutiny for national security reasons, the Pentagon held up FAA airspace approvals for apparently hundreds of projects.
This has been a key part of bipartisan energy legislation talks back in D.C., as Democrats in Congress have demanded at least some semblance of regular order be returned to renewable energy in federal permitting. The permitting bill ostensibly has ways to strengthen wind companies’ hand in dealing with a hostile Trump administration but negotiators, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, have also previously called attacks on wind projects during negotiations harmful to a final deal becoming law.
In September, Politico reported Trump told his aides he would agree to direct the Defense Department to “start clearing its queue of long-delayed onshore wind projects to strike a deal” citing “two people familiar with the talks and granted anonymity.” Among the commitments Politico reported were made: to approve about 30 projects awaiting a countersignature from the Pentagon on a mitigation agreement related to airspace impacts.
In federal court, the renewable energy trade groups who brought the lawsuit clearly don’t think the Trump administration actually followed through with that promise.
On Oct. 20, after updates from the Justice Department showed little signs of progress (which I wrote about), the trade groups filed a motion to enforce the judge’s stay on their air clearance freeze, saying that very little had advanced since the ruling in early August, and that none of the 30 projects awaiting countersignature on their mitigation agreements actually had advanced from Pentagon review. In addition, they said the government was now asking project developers to sign onto a litany of new requirements in exchange for a sign-off on mitigation agreements. They submitted a joint declaration from subject matter experts, including from former military personnel, who described these requirements as a vast departure from precedent with little basis in security rationale that they said also had terms that could violate state or local laws, like a blanket prohibition on aircraft detection light systems. (You can read the declaration here.)
Two days later, on Oct. 22, it started to look like we were getting somewhere when news outlets reported the Trump administration was "advancing" two “wind projects” in South Dakota and Maine, citing statements from the White House and the Pentagon.
Bob Ditchey, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, told us in an email that the two “wind projects” were Crowned Ridge, which he said consisted of 87 turbines in “Grant, SD,” and “Blue Sky/Hill,” which he said was made up of 19 turbines in “Hancock, ME.” Ditchey described them both as “proposed” wind energy “developments.”
“Following rigorous evaluation of potential impacts on military readiness, radar installations, and airspace operations, the DoW has cleared both projects to proceed to the next phase of federal evaluation,” Ditchey said in an email. “The projects have been formally referred to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for final aeronautical study and determination.”
The South Dakota wind project Trump officials are referencing is likely NextEra’s Crowned Ridge wind farm, which has 87 turbines and has been operational since 2019. On Oct. 5 a NextEra project consultant submitted a litany of height clearance requests for a “repowering project” on behalf of Crowned Ridge Energy Center, LLC, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s public database. The requests are for turbines in Grant County.
There is no Maine wind project with the name “Blue Sky/Hill,” as far as we can tell, but there is a project in Hancock County that was completed in 2012 called “Bull Hill” that consists of 19 turbines, and which also has pending applications for repowering in the FAA’s database.
Neither NextEra nor Bull Hill’s developer, TerraForm Power, responded to our requests for comment. The Pentagon also did not respond to questions about these projects or the additional ones it said it had advanced.
In addition, as of this story’s publication, all of the air clearance requests for these two projects are all listed as “pending” online.
If you’re wondering why operational wind farms might need air clearances for construction, all of the wind farms’ requests describe the projects as “repowering,” an industry term that applies to upgrading, modifying, altering or restarting pre-existing wind farms. A repowering can mean anything from fixing turbine blades to changing turbine height, or moving a turbine, or commissioning new turbines entirely. Crucially though it’s not really considered a “new wind farm” in the colloquial sense. As my colleague Matthew Zeitlin has explained, repowerings are seen by the energy sector as a simple pathway to the most juice for the squeeze from what has already been permitted and built.
On Tuesday, Punchbowl News reported that the White House was advancing three more wind projects in Illinois and Iowa. After this story ran, American Clean Power told members involved in the airspace litigation clarifying that all of the projects thus far are “repowerings” and that the two Illinois “projects” each were only individual wind turbines. None of the projects were new utility scale projects.
On Wednesday, just before this story went to press, Punchbowl News reported another two wind projects were advancing, calling it “more permitting goodwill from the White House.” We have not yet been able to confirm what these projects are or whether they are also repowering projects.
American Clean Power endorsed the bipartisan Senate permitting bill and called for its passage. The group provided a comment from Frank Macchiarola, their chief advocacy officer: “To date, the administration has moved forward only a handful of the total number of projects they agreed to approve. In order to pass BAAJA and bring down costs for Americans, the Administration needs to get serious about building clean power.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
