‘Scare tactics’ and uncertainty: What Trump’s offshore wind order means

America’s newly inaugurated president sought to deliver on his campaign pledge to ​“end” offshore wind development on his first day in office. ​“We aren’t going to do the wind thing,” Trump said Monday, moments before signing an executive order that presses the pause button on new activity within the sector.

Wind opponents had been calling for an all-out freeze on turbine construction — a so-called ​“stop work” order. But the order signed by Trump stopped short of that ambition. It paused the approval of leases, permits, and loans for both offshore and onshore wind energy pending a federal review. It also temporarily withdrew new offshore wind lease sales and called for a review of the ​“ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending existing wind energy leases.”

“While it’s clear that this will essentially ban permitting activity, we expected that,” said Christian Roselund, a renewables analyst and volunteer for Climate Action Rhode Island, a pro-wind advocacy group. He described the federal permitting process under Trump’s first administration as ​“essentially frozen.”

There are seven offshore wind projects whose permitting was underway and several more in earlier stages that will now be temporarily halted by the order, according to data collected by Canary Media from the federal permitting dashboard.

But seemingly safe from Trump’s pause are plans for nine commercial-scale offshore wind projects that already have federal permits in hand. Five are actively under construction across a swath of ocean that reaches from Maryland to Massachusetts. In total, the capacity of the fully permitted offshore wind plans left untouched by Trump’s order is 13,973 megawatts — enough to power nearly 5 million homes.

At least one company, Dominion Energy, has already confirmed its project is moving forward as planned. The utility told the publication Virginia Business that its 2.6 gigawatt offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia would be completed by 2026 as scheduled. 

America’s only operating large-scale offshore project, South Fork Wind, has been powering nearly 70,000 homes and businesses in New York since March.

Several East Coast states have set goals to decarbonize their power grids that rely in large part on offshore wind. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, both Democrats, reiterated their states’ commitment to offshore wind following the order.

“Any operational delay that could be caused by this order will adversely impact not only the Ocean State’s economy, but also our critically important Act on Climate goals,” Olivia DaRocha, a spokesperson for McKee, told Canary Media. ​“We are continuing a review of this order.”.

With companies pressing on and Democratic governors standing ground, experts warned against sensationalizing the impact of Trump’s move.

“The [executive order] shows a hostility with wind development on public lands and federal waters … but it doesn’t necessarily close the door,” said Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, and a former Interior Department official under President Bill Clinton.

The unknown Burgum factor

Squillace points to the significant role Trump’s pick for interior secretary, Doug Burgum, will have in ultimately determining how offshore leases and permitting move forward, regardless of Monday’s order. Executive orders are not ​“self-executing,” he added.

Before entering Trump’s orbit, Burgum was a friend to wind energy — at least the onshore variety. He indicated at his Senate confirmation hearing last week that he would allow fully permitted offshore wind projects ​“to continue” even in the likely case that Trump tries to explicitly halt them.

Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, also touted his home state’s abundant wind generation during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week. He advocated for a ​“balance” between intermittent energy sources like wind and ​“baseload” sources like gas. Offshore wind came up only when Sen. Angus King, a pro-wind independent from Maine, pressed the issue.

“I’m not familiar with every project that the Interior has underway, but I’ll certainly be taking a look at all of those. And if they make sense, and they’re already in law, then they’ll continue,” Burgum said.

Burgum’s support for wind stands in stark contrast to Trump’s opposition.

Trump’s long-held view is that wind turbines are ​“ugly,” ​“inefficient,” and ​“terrible for tourism.” His beef with big ocean turbines began almost a decade ago when 12 were slated to be built within view of his golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland. Trump tried — and failed — to stop the project in court. He has falsely claimed that turbines ​“kill whales” and ​“cause cancer.”

But even with Trump’s less-far-reaching order and Burgum’s potentially moderating stance, Trump’s influence will create a difficult four years for an industry already navigating a rough patch. Offshore wind has been wracked by inflation and soaring interest rates in recent years, leading to several high-profile project cancellations even before Trump won the presidency in November.

Proponents press on

One of the most high-profile cancellations came in October 2023 when Ørsted pulled out of Ocean Wind, a two-phase, 2.2 gigawatt project that would have delivered clean power to 1 million New Jersey homes. The Danish developer cited interest rates, inflation, and supply-chain woes. But the setback was temporary.

Within months, the Garden State — which has set a target of building 11 GW of offshore wind by 2040 — rebounded. It awarded two contracts to American-based developers to build Leading Light and Attentive Energy Two, projects that will generate a total of 3.78 GW of clean, offshore wind energy.

Attentive Energy Two and another New Jersey project named Atlantic Shores North are among the nation’s seven projects now frozen in Trump’s permitting pipeline. Leading Light is still in early development and therefore also unlikely to advance under Trump. That leaves only the Atlantic Shores South Projects 1 and 2, with a total planned capacity of 2.8 GW, that can deliver wind power to New Jersey on schedule.

“I remain committed to advancing my administration’s environmental and clean energy priorities, which have remained constant for the last seven years,” New Jersey Gov. Murphy told Canary Media in response to Trump’s offshore wind executive order on Monday. ​“New Jersey will explore all available options to protect the health of our environment and residents while bolstering energy independence, creating good-paying American jobs, lowering energy bills, and growing New Jersey’s innovation economy.”

It’s unclear how the state will achieve its goal of a 100 percent carbon-free grid by 2035 given the centrality of offshore wind to those plans and possible delays from Trump’s actions.

Other states face even more uncertainty.

North Carolina has set targets to procure 2.4 GW of offshore wind by 2030, but its first major project — Kitty Hawk North — is also now stuck in the permitting pipeline. Permitting was slated for completion in 2028. If Trump’s freeze endures for the rest of his administration, the project might not secure all 10 of its federal permits until 2032. The office of North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment.

These kinds of worst-case scenarios, though only possibilities, are already having an impact on the market.

Ørsted’s shares plummeted 17 percent after Trump signed the executive order, according to Reuters. In total, Denmark’s Ørsted is the named lessee or parent company for eight commercial-scale wind projects in various stages of development along the East Coast. After years of favorable U.S. prospects for wind under President Biden, the company warned investors on Monday of higher costs and delays under Trump’s policies.

Key industry groups called out the incongruity of Trump’s order against wind, which was signed alongside other orders to ramp up domestic energy production under a so-called ​“energy emergency.”

“The contradiction between the energy-focused Executive Orders is stark: while on one hand the Administration seeks to reduce bureaucracy and unleash energy production, on the other it increases bureaucratic barriers, undermining domestic energy development and harming American businesses and workers,” said Jason Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, in a statement released immediately after Trump signed the order.

Is this a ​“first step”?

Donald Trump said the U.S. is ​“going to have a policy where no windmills are being built” during a press conference earlier this month at his Mar-a-Lago resort. His executive order will not achieve that. Still, his follow-through on a Day One promise buoyed offshore wind opponents who have been demonstrating in the streets, submitting their policy wish lists to Trump’s team, and filing numerous lawsuits against projects.

On Saturday, the anti-wind group REACT Alliance led protests — one in California, one in New York — calling for the suspension of all offshore wind development. Mandy Davis, protest co- organizer and head of the National Offshore-Wind Opposition Alliance, told Canary Media that she and other opponents sent their own draft executive order to Trump’s team last week that included a ​“stop work” order on all federally permitted wind projects.

“We look at this initial executive order as a really good first step in fighting offshore wind,” said Davis. She said that Trump ​“is hearing us loud and clear,” but acknowledged that halting all offshore wind operations and plans in America is ​“complex and may take awhile.”

Other anti-wind groups are amplifying the call for a more aggressive policy stance against wind.

“We are encouraged by President Trump’s executive order and urge him to stop existing [offshore wind] projects already permitted, because those approvals were granted in violation of federal law,” said Mark Herr, a spokesperson for the New England–based anti-wind advocacy group Green Oceans.

The group has brought two lawsuits against the federal government, pending in federal court, over permitting for the South Fork and Revolution Wind projects. Both are managed by Ørsted.

Herr said he felt encouraged that Trump’s executive order contained language about these and the dozens of other federal lawsuits that anti-wind groups have brought against planned, permitted, and operating U.S. offshore wind projects. The order gives the attorney general ​“discretion” to request that courts ​“stay the litigation or otherwise delay further litigation, or seek other appropriate relief.”

“I think that’s kind of a nothing burger,” said Squillace, the law professor and former Interior official, when asked about the order’s language advising the Department of Justice to consider settling these anti-wind lawsuits rather than defending the projects against them.

“If the federal government is sued, settling is always an option. You don’t need an executive order to do that,” he said, suggesting that the language is there more for show.

Meanwhile, some analysts cast doubt over how much of the executive order will stand up in general, citing the low success rate of Trump’s previous executive orders when challenged by litigation and other resistance.

“I think this projection of powers they don’t have is a scare tactic … to scare investors, to scare energy companies, to scare proponents of offshore wind to give up,” said Roselund of the Rhode Island pro-wind group. He added: ​“We have no intention of giving up.”