One of the many concerns about artificial intelligence these days is how the rush to build data centers is impacting local communities. Data centers can create a drain on resources, and some utility companies have already said customers can expect to see their electricity bills growing as these facilities increase demand. There have been some discussions of what other power sources could support the AI engine, and wind power specialist Airloom is one company that’s looking to address the problem. Ahead of the business’ upcoming appearance at CES, we’ve learned a bit about what Airloom has accomplished this year and what it is aiming for next.
Rather than the very tall towers typically used for this approach, Airloom’s structures are 20 to 30 meters high. They are comprised of a loop of adjustable wings that move along a track, a design that’s akin to a roller coaster. As the wings move, they generate power just like the blades on a regular wind turbine do. Airloom claims that its structures require 40 percent less mass than a traditional one while delivering the same output. It also says the Airloom’s towers require 42 percent fewer parts and 96 percent fewer unique parts. In combination, the company says its approach is 85 percent faster to deploy and 47 percent less expensive than horizontal axis wind turbines. Airloom broke ground on a pilot site in June for testing out its approach and confirming how those figures work in practice.
It’s not feasible to bring a wind farm, even a small one, into CES, but Airloom will have a booth at the event with materials about its technology and engineering. While the business isn’t in a consumer-facing field, the impact of Airloom’s work could have a future positive impact on people if the data center boom continues.
BOSTON — Massachusetts’ two U.S. senators are demanding answers from the Trump administration about the “national security threats” it cited in the decision to scuttle several multibillion-dollar offshore wind projects.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey demanded a sit-down meeting with the agencies to review “recently completed classified reports” behind the “national security risks” the Trump administration cited in its decision to halt construction of the offshore wind projects.
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Two weeks after a judge struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order that blocked offshore wind development, the White House is again pausing leases for five large projects, this time citing concerns over radar interference.
“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday in a statement.
The affected projects include Revolution Wind in Connecticut and Rhode Island, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, and Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind, both of which are in New York. In total, these projects represent nearly 6 gigawatts of generating capacity for the Eastern seaboard, a hotspot of data center development.
The Department of the Interior justified the action by citing unclassified government reports — it didn’t say which agency had produced them, nor did it link to them — along with “recently completed classified reports” from the Pentagon. The department said it would give the government time to work with stakeholders to address national security concerns.
The statement did not acknowledge the ongoing work government and wind developers have been doing to address national security concerns, specifically related to radar, for years.
The report the Interior Department is likely referring to was issued by the Department of Energy in February 2024, and it lists a number of projects that were then underway to mitigate the problem of radar interference. (Otherreports over the years have been commissioned to address the same concerns, some dating back to the previous Trump administration.)
“To date, no mitigation technology has been able to fully restore the technical performance of impacted radars,” the 2024 report said. “However, the development and use of radar interference mitigation techniques, and collaboration both among federal agencies and between the federal government and the wind industry have enabled federal radar agencies to continue to perform their missions without significant impacts, and have also enabled significant wind energy deployments throughout the United States.”
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Radar interference caused by wind turbines is nothing new. Researchers have been studying the phenomenon for well over a decade, and they’ve developed a range of strategies to mitigate any problems.
Wind turbines present a unique challenge to radar operators.
“The motion of a wind turbine gives it a complex Doppler signature,” Nicholas O’Donoughue, a senior engineer at the Rand Corporation, told TechCrunch.
Doppler refers to the change in frequency of a wave like a radar signal caused by a moving object. As a wind turbine’s blades sweep through their arc, they are alternately moving toward and away from the radar station. The angle and speed of the blades can have an effect, too.
Those, along with other considerations, can “challenge the detection of any targets that are near the wind farm,” O’Donoughue said.
But radar systems can filter out signals that result from wind farms. “The primary approach is to use adaptive processing algorithms, such as Space-Time Adaptive Processing, to learn the structure of a wind farm’s interference,” he said.
“Over time, the reflections from a wind farm can be processed to look for patterns, which can then be matched and suppressed. This process is analogous to how modern adaptive noise cancellation headphones work, albeit more complicated.” Objects with a low radar cross section can still slip through, he noted.
Because of that, many wind farms are already built with radar installations in mind. “The most basic and widely employed mitigation method is wind farm siting, such as modifying the layout of a proposed wind farm to keep the wind turbines out of the line-of-sight of the radar,” the 2024 Energy department report said.
The Trump administration said on Monday that it is suspending leases for five offshore U.S. wind farms because of national security risks identified by the Department of Defense in classified reports.
The Department of the Interior “is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms! ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote in a social media post.
In a statement emailed to CBS News, the administration said it is pausing the following wind farm leases:
Vineyard Wind 1
Revolution Wind
CVOW – Commercial
Sunrise Wind
Empire Wind 1
The Interior Department didn’t disclose the specific security issues raised by the Defense Department, instead pointing to unclassified federal reports that have found wind projects can create risks because the movement of turbine blades, combined with their reflective towers, can create radar interference.
Called “clutter,” this radar interference can make it difficult to identify legitimate moving targets, Interior noted.
The action comes two weeks after a federal judge struck down President Trump’s executive order blocking wind energy projects, saying the effort to halt virtually all leasing of wind farms on federal lands and waters was “arbitrary and capricious” and violates U.S. law.
Judge Patti Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order blocking wind energy projects and declared it unlawful.
Saris ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, that challenged Trump’s Day One order that paused leasing and permitting for wind energy projects.
Halted projects
Vineyard Wind 1, located about 15 miles south of the Massachusetts islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, is slated to include 62 wind turbines, each spaced by one nautical mile apart, according to the project’s website. About half of those turbines were operational in October, the Vineyard Times reported that month.
Once fully developed, the project is projected to generate renewable energy for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Revolution Wind, a project located off the coast of Rhode Island, is 80% completed, according to its website. It’s operated by renewable energy company Orsted, which didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Dominion Energy’s CVOW, which stands for Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, is the largest offshore wind project in the U.S., with 176 turbines. The project was projected to be up and running by the end of 2026, according to its website.
In a statement to CBS News, Dominion said the Trump administration’s order threatens “thousands of jobs” and could create energy inflation. It added that the project would also supply energy for the nation’s security apparatus and artificial intelligence data centers.
“The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project (CVOW) is essential for American national security and meeting Virginia’s dramatically growing energy needs, the fastest growth in America,” the company said.
It added, “This growth is driven by the need to provide reliable power to many of America’s most important war fighting installations, the world’s largest warship manufacturer, and the largest concentration of data centers on the planet, as well as the leading edge of the AI revolution.”
Orsted’s Sunrise Wind, located about 30 miles from the coast of New York’s Long Island, was expected to be operating in 2027, according to its website.
Lastly, Empire Wind, also located off Long Island, is under construction. The company constructing Empire Wind, Equinor, said it is evaluating the Trump administration’s order.
“We are aware of the stop work order announced by the Department of Interior involving five wind projects under offshore construction in the U.S.,” an Equinor spokesman said. The company is “seeking further information from the federal government.”
BOSTON — A federal judge gave the go-ahead for Massachusetts and other states to proceed with wind energy expansion by rejecting an executive order signed by President Donald Trump halting permits for clean energy projects.
The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris on Monday sides with Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and 16 other Democrats who challenged Trump’s authority to enforce an order Jan. 20 that halted several offshore wind energy projects along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to New Jersey.
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BOSTON — House Democrats are walking back a controversial proposal to ease the state’s climate change mandates following pushback and threats of legal action from environmental groups opposed to the changes.
Legislation pending before the House Ways & Means Committee would make the state’s benchmark goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared with 1990 levels by 2030 “advisory in nature and unenforceable” and slash funding for the budget for Mass Save — the state’s primary energy efficiency program.
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Solar power is surging across the U.S. as costs plummet and companies ramp up large-scale commercial projects, but experts say the green industry faces an uncertain future as the Trump administration scraps federal subsidies that have helped foster growth of the clean energy sector.
Last year, more than 90% of all new U.S. electrical generating capacity came from renewable sources, with solar power accounting for more than 81% — the largest single-year increase from any energy source in two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
CNHI News Service
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From left, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin smile after posing for a photo with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the background after a news conference at the Pump Station 1 on Monday, June 2, 2025, located near Deadhorse, Alaska, on the state’s prodigious North Slope. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
Envinity Solar employees Josh Fisher, left, TJ Barnhart, Matt Hansen and John Delahanty install solar panels on the roof of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Envinity Solar employees Josh Fisher, left, TJ Barnhart, Matt Hansen and John Delahanty install solar panels on the roof of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Robert Inglis/The Daily Item
Solar power is surging across the U.S. as costs plummet and companies ramp up large-scale commercial projects, but experts say the green industry faces an uncertain future as the Trump administration scraps federal subsidies that have helped foster growth of the clean energy sector.
Last year, more than 90% of all new U.S. electrical generating capacity came from renewable sources, with solar power accounting for more than 81% — the largest single-year increase from any energy source in two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
CNHI News Service
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From left, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin smile after posing for a photo with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the background after a news conference at the Pump Station 1 on Monday, June 2, 2025, located near Deadhorse, Alaska, on the state’s prodigious North Slope. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
Envinity Solar employees Josh Fisher, left, TJ Barnhart, Matt Hansen and John Delahanty install solar panels on the roof of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) start-up Stellerus Technology aims to be the world’s first provider of satellite-enabled three-dimensional wind data to help wind power, transport and insurance firms boost revenues, cut costs and manage risks, according to its founders.
Stellerus, founded in 2023 by the university’s academics, would leverage China’s cost competitiveness in satellite manufacturing to make global 3D wind data collection economically viable, said Su Hui, the chairwoman and co-founder.
3D wind data – wind direction and speed and their changes with altitude – is crucial for improving weather forecasting, especially severe climate events.
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“After I came to Hong Kong, I realised the technology for implementing such a project in mainland China was quite developed and the cost would be much lower than overseas,” Su said. “In the US, such a satellite could cost US$100 million to build, compared with 20 million yuan [US$2.8 million] in China.”
Su Hui, the chairwoman and co-founder of Stellerus Technology. Photo: Edmond So alt=Su Hui, the chairwoman and co-founder of Stellerus Technology. Photo: Edmond So>
Su, a hydraulic expert, joined the HKUST’s department of civil and environmental engineering in 2022 as chair professor. She was formerly a principal scientist and weather programme manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Nasa.
By deploying advanced optical sensors, Stellerus could collect data and use artificial intelligence to analyse carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour in the atmosphere to calculate changes in wind direction and speed, she said.
“Such detailed data is lacking for meteorological observation and analysis globally,” she said. “Various organisations, including Nasa, plan to embark on such a project, but none has been implemented so far due to the high cost of launching a satellite constellation.”
Nasa was testing laser technology for developing space-based 3D wind measurements, according to its website. It was also collaborating with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop advanced remote weather sensing instruments that can be flown aboard satellites to collect highly precise data to improve weather forecasting globally.
In August 2023, HKUST partnered with Chang Guang Satellite Technology – a Jilin government-backed firm and China’s first commercial remote sensing satellite company – to become Hong Kong’s first higher education institution to launch an Earth environmental satellite.
Stellerus paid the university a licensing fee to obtain wind prediction data, which was derived from high-resolution digital images, with each pixel depicting half a square metre of area on the ground.
Stellerus, the winner of the HKUST-Sino Group entrepreneurship competition last month, had been designing new satellites for climate observation, said CEO David Liu.
The Hong Kong Science and Technology Park-based company, which has raised “tens of millions” of dollars from investors since inception, aimed to launch a pair of satellites via the Tianzhou-10 spacecraft within the next 18 months, followed by another five, Liu added.
The six satellites would form a constellation, which should be sufficient for global coverage of wind data, Liu said, adding Stellerus aimed to supply the data to developers of applications for the aviation, shipping and insurance industries.
“The applications include aircraft route optimisation for fuel saving and air turbulence avoidance, shipping route planning for fuel efficiency, as well as climate risk management and product pricing by property and casualty insurers,” he said.
Stellerus was in advanced talks with wind-farm developers and state-owned power grid operators, which were interested in using its 3D wind data for a fee, Liu added.
China has the world’s largest fleet of wind farms.
The data would help wind farm operators enhance power sales and save tens of millions of yuan spent on building wind monitoring towers, said Jeffrey Xu Mingyuan, the chief technology officer at Stellerus.
“Currently, it is very costly to obtain accurate wind data, especially for offshore operators,” he said. “We aim to tackle the technology bottleneck by providing more affordable and better quality data useful for siting wind farms, energy storage, trading and grid access planning.”
In New Bedford, Massachusetts, Captain Jack Morris, a lifelong scalloper, had recently found steady work supporting offshore wind construction. But with the Revolution Wind project now frozen by the Trump administration, those jobs are on hold. Jacob Wycoff reports.
Worldwide solar and wind power generation has outpaced electricity demand this year, and for the first time on record, renewable energies combined generated more power than coal, according to a new analysis.
Global solar generation grew by a record 31% in the first half of the year, while wind generation grew by 7.7%, according to the report by the energy think tank Ember, which was released after midnight Tuesday London time. Solar and wind generation combined grew by more than 400 terawatt hours, which was more than overall global demand increased in the same period, it found.
The findings suggest it is possible for the world to wean off polluting sources of power — even as demand for electricity skyrockets — with continued investment in renewables including solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal energies.
“That means that they can keep up the pace with growing appetite for electricity worldwide,” said Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, senior electricity analyst at Ember and lead author of the study.
At the same time, total fossil fuel generation dropped slightly, by less than 1%.
“The fall overall of fossil may be small, but it is significant,” said Wiatros-Motyka. “This is a turning point when we see emissions plateauing.”
The firm analyzes monthly data from 88 countries representing the vast majority of electricity demand around the world. Reasons that demand is increasing include economic growth, electric vehicles and data centers, rising populations in developing countries and the need for more cooling as temperatures rise.
Meeting that demand by burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas for electricity releases planet-warming gases including carbon dioxide and methane. This leads to more severe, costly and deadly extreme weather.
Ember also dedicated part of its report to an analysis of China, India, the European Union and the U.S. Combined, they account for nearly two-thirds of electricity generation and carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector globally.
In the first six months of the year, China added more solar and wind than the rest of the world combined, and its fossil fuel generation fell by 2%, the report said.
India saw record solar and wind growth that outpaced the growth in demand. India’s fossil fuel generation also dropped.
In both nations, emissions fell.
“It’s often been said by analysts that renewable energy doesn’t really lead to a reduction in fossil fuel use,” said Michael Gerrard, founder and director of the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, who was not involved in the report. “This report highlights an encouraging step in the opposite direction.”
But in the U.S., demand growth outpaced the growth of clean power generation. In the E.U., sluggish wind and hydropower generation contributed to higher coal and gas generation, the report said. In both markets, fossil fuel generation and emissions increased.
In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump attacked renewable energy and questioned the validity of the concept of climate change.
Experts warn that Trump’s efforts to block clean energy will have a long-term impact.
“The federal government is greatly increasing the growth of artificial intelligence, which is going to massively increase electricity demand, and they’re also shutting down the cheapest new sources of electricity, wind and solar. That’s going to lead to a gap in supply and demand,” Gerrard said.
Renewables “still have an opportunity to make inroads in to displacing fossil fuels, even with some demand growth,” said Amanda Smith, senior scientist at research organization Project Drawdown, who also wasn’t involved in the report. But, Smith said: “I am very cautiously optimistic that renewables can continue to grow and continue to displace fossil fuels in the U.S. I am more optimistic on the world scale.”
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BOSTON — The Trump administration is signaling that it will likely cancel a federal permit for a regional offshore wind project, drawing a rebuke from state leaders and environmentalists who said such a decision would set back the state’s climate change goals and cost thousands of good-paying jobs.
The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said in a new court filing last week that it is reconsidering federal approval of Avangrid’s New England Wind 1 project. The 719-megawatt project called for generating enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes in the state.
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BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey and other state leaders are blasting the Trump administration for clawing back $33.8 million in federal funding for a Salem project to support offshore wind development, saying the move jeopardizes hundreds of jobs and the state’s climate change goals.
The U.S. Department of Transportation on Friday canceled $679 million in federal funding for a dozen infrastructure projects that would support offshore wind, saying the plans “were not aligned with the goals and priorities of the administration.”
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They would not like them on our federal lands (those are reserved for oil and gas, and maybe nuclear reactors). They do not want them on farmland. They will not allow them to float offshore. The Trump Administration’s war on wind and solar power just keeps getting more aggressive: late last week, for instance, it announced an investigation into whether it should tariff wind-turbine components arriving from other nations for projects that it had taken office too late to block. As the Times politely put it, “The Trump administration has typically imposed tariffs to protect American companies against foreign competition and spur domestic production of critical products. This time, laying out a path to impose tariffs could be an attempt to stymie an industry.” On Friday, it shut down an almost-completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island on unspecified (and hard to imagine) “national security” grounds.
The Seussian rancor with which every layer of the Administration views clean energy would be almost funny if it weren’t so tragically shortsighted. As recently as 2009, Donald Trump joined a handful of other business leaders in signing a full-page ad in the Times urging President Obama to “strengthen” U.S. climate legislation and to “lead the world by example.” The ad insisted that “investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of-the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security, all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk. We have the ability and know how to lead the world in clean energy technology.” The other signatories ran the gamut from Ben and Jerry to Martha Stewart, but only Trump had the rest of his key executives sign on: Don, Jr.; Eric; and Ivanka.
But that was before the sight of wind turbines on the horizon at Trump’s Scottish golf course wounded him grievously. As he wrote to Scotland’s First Minister, in 2011, as his project neared completion, “Unfortunately, instead of celebrating the start of something valuable and beautiful for Scotland, this ugly cloud is hanging over the future of the great Scottish coastline.” And it was nearly fifteen years before oil-and-gas executives spent unprecedented sums during an election cycle; nearly half the amount spent during the 2024 cycle went to Republicans, and the rest on lobbying Congress. We’re not in Kansas (the fourth-largest wind-producing state) anymore.
The greatest irony of this dramatic turnaround is that in 2009 solar and wind power were still expensive; now they are the cheapest forms of energy on offer. And yet the Administration is digging in. The question is: will it be able to hold that position even as electricity prices begin to rise? (On average, they are up ten per cent so far this year.)
At the moment, official policy appears to be a complete muddle. The President, on his first day in office in January, declared an “energy emergency” as a way to suspend regulations and allow both increased drilling and the creation of more generating capacity. His team argues that we need far more electricity in order to build data centers that would enable the U.S. to outpace China in the race for “A.I. dominance.” As Trump put it in his Day One declaration, “without immediate remedy,” America’s energy situation “will dramatically deteriorate in the near future due to a high demand for energy and natural resources to power the next generation of technology. The United States’ ability to remain at the forefront of technological innovation depends on a reliable supply of energy and the integrity of our Nation’s electrical grid.” But then came the cascade of decisions designed to restrict the cheapest—and, just as important, fastest to construct—sources of new energy supply. Trump’s team ignored the pleas of actual data-center operators to keep Biden-era rules on renewable energy, which might have let them build what they needed right away. We are, to use a metaphor from the internal-combustion era, stamping on the gas and the brakes at the same time.
Though Economics 101 would seem to indicate that cutting off the easiest source of new supply while demand is simultaneously rising would inevitably cause prices to climb, the Trump Administration has been rejecting this argument in favor of telling whoppers. Last Wednesday, the President took to Truth Social to insist that “STUPID AND UGLY WINDMILLS ARE KILLING NEW JERSEY. Energy prices up 28% this year, and not enough electricity to take care of state. STOP THE WINDMILLS!” In point of fact, though, the windmills planned for off the Jersey shore have been cancelled, thanks to the Administration. The entire state currently has just six wind turbines, generating nine megawatts of power, which, as the American Clean Power Association points out, is 0.03 per cent of the state’s energy production. Whatever is driving up electricity prices, it isn’t wind—in fact, the states with high levels of wind power, including the very red states of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, have some of the lowest electric rates in the country.
The Administration’s bet seems to be that it can hold back renewable power in this country indefinitely—and perhaps it can. But even here its reach is somewhat limited: Texas, with very little in the way of public lands, continues to lead the nation in installing new clean energy. And, outside our borders, the sun rush continues unabated, which matters because Trump, in his energy-emergency directive, also called on the U. S. to export more fuel, in order to “create jobs and economic prosperity for Americans forgotten in the present economy, improve the United States’ trade balance, help our country compete with hostile foreign powers, strengthen relations with allies and partners, and support international peace and security.” That may be a tall order. We learned last month that China installed two hundred and twelve gigawatts of new solar power in the first six months of the year, compared with twelve in the U.S.; as a result, its carbon emissions have begun to fall, even as its economy keeps growing. (America’s emissions, in contrast, rose sharply over the same period.) And other nations are following China’s lead: Indonesia, the fourth most populous country, announced plans last week for a hundred gigawatts of solar over the next five years. Why? Because it’s so much cheaper than running the diesel generators that currently supply much of that country’s rural electricity. “The estimated levelized cost of electricity (L.C.O.E.) for this system is about $0.12 to $0.15/kWh over the next 25 years, compared to $0.20 to $0.40/kWh for a diesel generator,” the head of a Jakarta-based energy-transition think tank told PV magazine.
Numbers like that have convinced the International Energy Agency that peak consumption of oil on this planet can’t be far off; the Trump Administration’s response has been, as in other cases, to try to play with the data. It is currently pressuring the I.E.A. (set up by that environmental radical Henry Kissinger in the nineteen-seventies in response to the OPEC oil-price shocks) to fire one of its top officials and replace her with someone who will parrot the White House line that demand for fossil fuels will keep climbing for decades. “They want to get operatives in there, whether they’re career or political, who can actually move the needle,” an unidentified lobbyist told Politico. “They’re going to get someone they trust and that person is going to fight from the inside out.”
You can only get away with that kind of maneuvering for a while, however, and the Administration’s license may be running out. One fascinating indicator: the world’s hedge funds seem to be placing their bets on solar. Since Liberation Day, Bloomberg reported earlier this month, the main index of renewable funds had risen eighteen per cent, while oil-and-gas shares had fallen four per cent. “If we are going to continue to grow both in developed and emerging economies, we’re going to need a lot of energy,” one analyst explained. “A big chunk of the marginal growth in energy over the last 10 years has come from renewables and it’s hard to see why that isn’t going to continue.”
The Trump administration halted construction on a nearly complete offshore wind project near Rhode Island as the White House continues to attack the battered U.S. offshore wind industry that scientists say is crucial to the urgent fight against climate change.
Danish wind farm developer Orsted says the Revolution Wind project is about 80% complete, with 45 out of its 65 turbines already installed.
Despite that progress — and the fact that the project had cleared years of federal and state reviews — the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued the order Friday, saying the federal government needs to review the project and “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.”
It did not specify what the national security concerns are.
President Donald Trump has made sweeping strides to prioritize fossil fuels and hinder renewable energy projects. Trump recently called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or “farmer destroying Solar” projects. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” he wrote on his Truth Social site this week.
Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee criticized the stop-work order and said he and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont “will pursue every avenue to reverse the decision to halt work on Revolution Wind” in a post on X. Both governors are Democrats.
Construction on Revolution Wind began in 2023, and the project was expected to be fully operational next year. Orsted says it is evaluating the financial impact of stopping construction and is considering legal proceedings.
Revolution Wind is located more than 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of the Rhode Island coast, 32 miles (51 kilometers) southeast of the Connecticut coast and 12 miles (19 kilometers) southwest of Martha’s Vineyard. Rhode Island is already home to one offshore wind farm, the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm.
Revolution Wind was expected to be Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, capable of powering more than 350,000 homes. The densely populated states have minimal space available for land-based energy projects, which is why the offshore wind project is considered crucial for the states to meet their climate goals.
“This arbitrary decision defies all logic and reason — Revolution Wind’s project was already well underway and employed hundreds of skilled tradesmen and women. This is a major setback for a critical project in Connecticut, and I will fight it,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said in a statement.
“Today, the U.S. has only one fully operational large-scale offshore wind project producing power. That is not enough to meet America’s rising energy needs. We need more energy of all types, including oil and gas, wind, and new and emerging technologies,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a group that supports offshore oil, gas and wind.
Green Oceans, a nonprofit that opposes the offshore wind industry, applauded the BOEM’s decision. “We are grateful that the Trump Administration and the federal government are taking meaningful action to preserve the fragile ocean environment off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts,” the nonprofit said in a statement.
This is the second major offshore wind project the White House has halted. Work was stopped on Empire Wind, a New York offshore wind project, but construction was allowed to resume after New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, intervened.
“This administration has it exactly backwards. It’s trying to prop up clunky, polluting coal plants while doing all it can to halt the fastest growing energy sources of the future – solar and wind power,” said Kit Kennedy, managing director for the power division at Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “Unfortunately, every American is paying the price for these misguided decisions.”
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A nearby offshore wind farm was already planned when Donald Trump purchased coastal land in northern Scotland to develop the Trump International Golf Links—a project he envisioned as an homage to his Scottish-American mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.
“I am not thrilled. I want to see the ocean; I do not want to see windmills,” Trump told BBC News in May 2006. It was the first-known example of Trump’s years-long war against wind power.
It took another five years for the Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm to initiate permitting and, in 2012 as the golf course was nearing its opening, Trump launched an all-out media and legal assault against the wind project—a campaign that proved unsuccessful. “Tourism will suffer and the beauty of your country is in jeopardy,” Trump warned in a 2012 advertisement.
Trump wrote in a 2013 Daily Mail article that he would fight “for as long as it takes—to hell if I have to—and spend as much as it takes to block this useless and grotesque blot on our heritage.” By the time he was first running for president in 2015, Trump had tweeted negatively about wind or “windmills” more than 130 times.
Much to Trump’s chagrin, the Scottish wind farm opened in 2018. But he’s carried that fight much more aggressively in his second term as U.S. president.
Upon his return to Scotland this July, he emphasized: “We will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us”. Trump added Aug. 20 on Truth Social that he “will not approve” wind or solar projects. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” he posted.
While Trump may not prevent every new wind turbine installed in the U.S., he certainly is trying.
Apart from a rapid phasedown of tax credits for wind and solar projects in the One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law in July, the Trump administration has ramped up its attacks on wind—and solar—into a full-scale war, including all but banning new wind and solar projects on federal lands and waters, keeping wind turbines away from highways and railroads, investigating turbines for eagle deaths, and, most recently, making it harder for renewables to even qualify for the short-lived credits eliminated after 2027.
Potentially most onerously, wind or solar projects must now go through three levels of federal review, including personally by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who said in August that “gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects hold America back from achieving U.S. energy dominance.” These secretary-level reviews include many proposed on private land. Earlier this month, the administration canceled the massive Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho, yanking permits approved last year.
While Trump has long despised wind turbines, he’s only made it a top political priority in 2025. More wind projects were built during Trump’s first term than during the Biden administration. It’s only now though that U.S. power demand is surging—thanks to the AI data center boom—and it’s happening just when renewable energy is being handicapped.
Average electricity bill costs are up 7% year over year as of May, according to the Department of Energy, and they’re projected to keep rising.
“It’s a triumph of polarization over pragmatism,” American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet told Fortune. “What is mind-boggling is that, after eliminating the subsidies, the administration has then gone on the attack with federal mandates and buckets of red tape to actively oppose projects being built.”
Executive ‘double-cross’
The last-minute compromise in the “Big Beautiful Bill” focused on keeping the renewable energy tax credits in place for now—but quickly phasing them out.
To qualify, projects must break ground by July 4, 2026, or be completed by the end of 2027. The key is really on breaking ground by next summer because few started after July 2026 are likely to finish by year-end 2027.
As soon as the omnibus spending law was passed, the Trump administration went to work making it harder to qualify for the tax credits—specifically what counts as breaking ground. Those revised rules were finalized on Aug.15.
It used to be that developers only had to pay 5% of the costs up front to lock in the tax credits. Instead, the 5% rule is eliminated for all but small solar farms, requiring all others to demonstrate that “physical work of a significant nature” has begun on or off-site, such as foundation excavation.
Grumet calls it a “double-cross” to immediately change the rules after reaching a deal that was already tough on the clean power sector. “This is basically an ‘America Last’ energy policy,” he said.
The fear was the administration would change the rules even more dramatically, but some Republican senators—including John Curtis of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa—threatened holds on confirming some Trump nominees until the rules were released. After all, most new wind and solar farms are being built in so-called red states.
Also troublesome for the industry are new foreign-sourcing rules that penalize projects for using Chinese parts in a renewables industry dominated by Chinese supply chains.
Other regulatory aspects are potentially worse for the industry too. For instance, Burgum’s Interior Department went a step further on Aug. 1 to also include “enhanced” reviews for power line transmission projects that are deemed to help enable wind or solar projects.
That order came days after the Energy Department revoked a loan guarantee for the 800-mile Grain Belt Express transmission project from Kansas to Indiana.
Christina Hayes, executive director of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, told Fortune that the transmission policy move adds more “uncertainty” when the nation rapidly needs more power infrastructure, especially when power lines are agnostic to electricity generated by wind or coal burning.
“There’s no sorting hack for electrons. Once an electron is on the system, it is like all the other electrons,” Hayes said, proceeding to make a Harry Potter reference. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, you’re a Gryffindor electron, you’re a renewable electron, you’re Hufflepuff, you’re coal.’ That’s not how this works.”
Rising obstacles
Potentially the most insidious changes for wind and solar aren’t the outright policy revisions, but the behind-the-curtains roadblocks created: federal websites going dark, meetings canceled, phone calls repeatedly unanswered.
“In order to permit a project, you have to interact with the federal government,” Grumet said. “You’re a developer, and you’ve gone through your 63 of 64 steps, and suddenly you can’t get your final meeting. And now future permits are going to be politicized at the cabinet secretary level for everything from where you put a fence to how you create a road. It’s weaponizing bureaucracy to undermine American energy production.”
For instance, Hayes said Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts contributed to the Energy Department’s staffing for the Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits Program (CITAP) shrinking from about 60 people to six—critical for transmission siting and permitting.
Grumet likened the process to going to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the 1950s-era Soviet Union. “The government is challenging enough when everyone is working towards solutions; it’s impossible when the government is working to create problems.”
All the false claims
Trump has repeatedly called “windmills” a green energy scam and accused them of killing birds and marine life. He’s even falsely said the noise can cause cancer. But mostly, he loathes wind turbines for their aesthetics.
On the other hand, air pollution from fossil fuels can be carcinogenic, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that oil pits cause three times more bird deaths than wind turbines, which were deemed responsible for fewer than 0.01% of human-caused bird fatalities.
Outside of, yes, cats, the leading cause of bird deaths is building and glass collisions, including Trump’s towers in New York and around the world. Trump’s Aberdeen golf complex also was built on sand dunes that housed multiple species of endangered birds.
“The American public sees past the idea that a wind blade is a carcinogen,” Grumet said. “The issue the president really focuses on is the aesthetics. That’s a matter of personal opinion if the president thinks that staring at a natural gas facility is a source of American beauty, and staring at a wind turbine is an assault on the landscape.”
So, why now? One, this Trump administration is more filled with partisan players who were prepared to hit the ground running. Two, the energy fight increasingly has become more politically biased.
“Between 2020 and 2024, I think the whole energy debate became more partisan, and wind power, in particular, got locked into the ‘us versus them’ imagination of the way America works,” Grumet said.
Yes, it’s a tough time for renewable energy in America. Fewer projects will come to fruition. The extent of that decline is unclear. But new natural gas-fired plants and nuclear facilities will take five to 10 years to build. Retiring coal plants will have their lives extended, but only temporarily. New power generation is needed more quickly, and renewables, especially solar power, will still fill most of the short-term gap—with or without tax credits.
“We are inexorably moving toward a more efficient, lower-carbon energy system,” Grumet said. “The president’s actions certainly could slow that down for a couple years, but the direction is not going to change.”
WASHINGTON — With electricity prices rising at more than twice the rate of inflation, President Donald Trump has lashed out at renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, blaming them for skyrocketing energy costs.
Trump called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or “farmer destroying Solar” projects. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” he wrote on his Truth Social site.
Energy analysts say renewable sources have little to do with recent price hikes, which are based on increased demand, aging infrastructure and increasingly extreme weather events such as wildfires that are exacerbated by climate change.
The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems. Increased use of electric vehicles also has boosted demand, even as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans move to restrict tax credits and other incentives for EV purchases approved under the Biden administration.
Natural gas prices, meanwhile, are rising sharply amid increased exports to Europe and other international customers. More than 40% of U.S. electricity is generated by natural gas.
Trump promised during the 2024 campaign to lower Americans’ electric bills by 50%. Democrats have been quick to blame him for the price hikes, citing actions to hamstring clean energy in the sprawling tax-and-spending cut bill approved last month, as well as regulations since then to further restrict wind and solar power.
“Now more than ever, we need more energy, not less, to meet our increased energy demand and power our grid. Instead of increasing our energy supply Donald Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the clean energy sector, killing jobs and projects,” said New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The GOP bill will cost thousands of jobs and impose higher energy costs nationwide, Heinrich and other critics said.
A report from Energy Innovation, a non-partisan think tank, found the GOP tax law will increase the average family’s energy bill by $130 annually by 2030. “By quickly phasing out technology-neutral clean energy tax credits and adding complex material sourcing requirements,” the tax law will “significantly hamper the development of domestic electricity generation capacity,” the report said.
Renewable advocates were more blunt.
“The real scam is blaming solar for fossil fuel price spikes,” the Solar Energy Industries Association said in response to Trump’s post.
“Farmers, families, and businesses choose solar to save money, preserve land, and escape high costs of the old, dirty fuels being forced on them by this administration,” the group added.
Wind and solar offer some of the cheapest and fastest ways to provide electric power, said Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, another industry group. More than 90% of new energy capacity that came online in the U.S. in 2024 was clean energy, he said.
“Blocking cheap, clean energy while doubling down on outdated fossil fuels makes no economic or environmental sense,” added Ted Kelly, director of U.S. clean energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright blamed rising prices on “momentum” from Biden-era policies that backed renewable power over fossil fuel sources such as oil, coal and natural gas.
“That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office,” Wright told POLITICO during a visit to Iowa last week. About 60 percent of the state’s electricity comes from wind.
Not all the pushback comes from Democrats.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican who backs wind power, has placed a hold on three Treasury nominees to ensure wind and solar have “an appropriate glidepath for the orderly phase-out of the tax credits” approved in the 2022 climate law under former President Joe Biden.
Grassley said he was encouraged by new Treasury guidance that limits tax credits for wind and solar projects but does not eliminate them. The guidance “seems to offer a viable path forward for the wind and solar industries to continue to meet increased energy demand,” Grassley said in a statement.
John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Republican tax law will increase U.S. power bills by slowing construction of solar, wind, and battery projects and could eliminate as many as 45,000 jobs by 2030.
Trump administration polices that emphasize fossil fuels are “an extremely backward force in this conversation,” Quigley said. “Besides ceding the clean energy future to other nations, we are paying for fossil foolishness with more than money — with our health and with our safety. And our children will pay an even higher price.”
Battery storage is what allows renewable energy to provide power even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. It’s key to making the electrical grid reliable as we transition away from coal and gas. Ben Tracy examines how battery technology is improving.
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America’s first large-scale offshore wind farms began sending power to the Northeast in early 2024, but a wave of wind farm project cancellations and rising costs have left many people with doubts about the industry’s future in the US.
Several big hitters, including Ørsted, Equinor, BP, and Avangrid, have canceled contracts or sought to renegotiate them in recent months. Pulling out meant the companies faced cancellation penalties ranging from $16 million to several hundred million dollars per project. It also resulted in Siemens Energy, the world’s largest maker of offshore wind turbines, anticipating financial losses in 2024 of around $2.2 billion.
Altogether, projects that had been canceled by the end of 2023 were expected to total more than 12 gigawatts of power, representing more than half of the capacity in the project pipeline.
So, what happened, and can the US offshore wind industry recover?
I lead the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Wind-Energy Science, Technology, and Research (WindSTAR) and Center for Energy Innovation, and follow the industry closely. The offshore wind industry’s troubles are complicated, but it’s far from dead in the US, and some policy changes may help it find firmer footing.
A Cascade of Approval Challenges
Getting offshore wind projects permitted and approved in the US takes years and is fraught with uncertainty for developers, more so than in Europe or Asia.
Before a company bids on a US project, the developer must plan the procurement of the entire wind farm, including making reservations to purchase components such as turbines and cables, construction equipment, and ships. The bid must also be cost-competitive, so companies have a tendency to bid low and not anticipate unexpected costs, which adds to financial uncertainty and risk.
Before starting to build, the developer must conduct site assessments to determine what kind of foundations are possible and identify the scale of the project. The developer must consummate an agreement to sell the power it produces, identify a point of interconnection to the power grid, and then prepare a construction and operation plan, which is subject to further environmental review. All of that takes about five years, and it’s only the beginning.
For a project to move forward, developers may need to secure dozens of permits from local, tribal, state, regional, and federal agencies. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which has jurisdiction over leasing and management of the seabed, must consult with agencies that have regulatory responsibilities over different aspects in the ocean, such as the armed forces, Environmental Protection Agency, and National Marine Fisheries Service, as well as groups including commercial and recreational fishing, Indigenous groups, shipping, harbor managers, and property owners.
