President Donald Trump’s freeze on approvals of new wind energy projects has been deemed “unlawful” in a federal court.
The attorneys general also claimed that the wind ban on new projects on federal lands and waters impeded their ability to “lower energy costs” and “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” through wind energy generation.
States with ambitious offshore wind plans were especially hard-hit. Almost all offshore projects are built in federal waters, where the government acts as a kind of landlord. The executive order halted seven offshore wind projects that were in the process of being permitted and several others in earlier stages of development, according to data collected by Canary Media from the federal permitting dashboard. In total, roughly 40 offshore wind leases are scattered across the waters offshore of Maine down to the Carolinas, across the Gulf of Mexico, and along the California coast.
Saris ruled that the executive order was “arbitrary and capricious” on multiple grounds. For example, the Department of the Interior had failed to provide a “reasoned explanation” for suddenly changing course from the decades-long practice of issuing wind permits.
The ruling is the latest in a series of major losses for the Trump administration as it seeks to defend the president’s anti-wind agenda in court. Last week, a federal judge denied the government’s attempt to revoke approvals for US Wind, a project slated to be Maryland’s first offshore wind farm. In September, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Danish energy giant Ørsted, whose $6.2 billion New England offshore wind project was halted by the Interior Department, which cited the executive order to justify the move but, as the judge put it, didn’t provide any“factual findings.”
The government had defended the order as temporary, pending the completion of a review of permitting and leasing practices. Federal lawyers argued that this assessment was “underway” but submitted no documents to the court to support such claims. Saris struck down this argument, blasting the review for having “no anticipated end date” and creating the risk of a de facto indefinite permitting moratorium.
A former Interior Department official who spoke with Canary Media on the condition of anonymity said that there was little evidence that the agency had even initiated this kind of review, at least within the first half of the year.
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