UTILITIES
Since his second term in office began, US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his distaste for wind energy. During his special address at the World Economic Forum in January, he called turbines“ losers”. Meanwhile, he has consistently repeated his belief that offshore arrays make whales“ crazy” and that noise from windmills“ causes cancer”.
The President’ s assault on wind energy has not just been verbal, either. He has vied to disrupt the construction of wind farms in the US for months now, but has been thwarted several times over.
One of the first executive orders he signed upon his second inauguration called for the indefinite cessation of all wind farm approvals, though this was disrupted by federal courts.
A subsequent move to pause leases for five major projects already under construction on national security grounds was similarly met with preliminary injunctions, allowing work to proceed.
That said, the Trump administration has made some inroads in its war on wind. In March, the White House reached an agreement with TotalEnergies that will see the French energy giant halt the construction of all its new projects in US waters.
The Paris-based firm had been planning two wind farms on the Eastern Seaboard: one off the coast of North Carolina and the other off the coast of New York. Neither of these sites will now be completed after the US Government agreed to pay TotalEnergies back nearly US $ 1bn in lease fees, all from taxpayers’ money.
108 June 2026