Recommendations of the Editorial team
Donald Trump has long been an enemy of wind power – and he doesn’t let a minor energy crisis stop him from paying his bills.
It apparently started in 2006, when Trump bought a property on the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland, wanted to build a golf course there and campaigned against a planned offshore wind project in the area. He lost that battle – but has been fighting relentlessly against wind energy ever since. The latest escalation came last week when the president’s administration announced it would pay French energy company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its offshore wind energy projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina.
This comes as the US faces a major energy crisis amid skyrocketing oil prices as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of the Iran War. Curiously, the Interior Department is portraying the payment as a win for energy costs. “This agreement is another victory for President Trump’s commitment to affordable and reliable energy for all Americans,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Billion dollar deal against wind power
TotalEnergies has now committed to investing in oil and gas production in the USA and not to develop any offshore wind projects in the country in the future. As energy costs continue to rise due to the war on Iran and factors such as demand fueled by AI data centers, the Trump administration continues to combat renewable energy production – the cheapest form of energy available.
“They are using taxpayer dollars to raise energy costs and undermine our energy security,” Erin Baker, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, tells ROLLING STONE. “The last thing we need is to stop energy projects – especially those that are cheap, clean and do not contribute to climate change.”
The payment to TotalEnergies is just the latest attempt by the Trump administration to paralyze the development of wind energy. At the end of last year, the government tried to block numerous ongoing offshore wind projects.
Courts stop Trump’s blockade
So the government tried to stop the project known as Revolution Wind — which is expected to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses in Connecticut and Rhode Island — citing national security concerns. However, a federal judge ruled that the government had not adequately substantiated those concerns, and the project began delivering electricity to the region in early March.
The Virginia Coastal Offshore Wind Project has also been targeted by the government. A federal judge ruled in January that the project could proceed, and it began delivering energy in late March. The Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off the coast of New York also survived Trump’s attempts to prevent their completion.
Trump is undoubtedly causing problems for the wind power industry, but he has not been able to stop its continued growth. Solar and battery industries also continue to grow at a remarkable pace and face fewer obstacles, despite the presidential push for more expensive fossil fuels at the expense of cleaner energy.
Record growth despite headwinds
“In 2025, despite hostile federal actions, wind, solar and battery capacity grew at record rates – with 50 gigawatts in the US alone,” says Baker.
The real victim of Trump’s actions is less the wind industry than the United States itself. Julie K. Lundquist, professor of atmospheric sciences and wind energy at Johns Hopkins University, says Trump’s actions are making the United States increasingly unattractive as a market for wind energy companies and harming the industry’s development as a whole.
“Many companies are focusing on markets outside the U.S. Attention is turning away from the American market,” says Lundquist. “The United States could take a leadership role in these future industries, but right now we are eliminating ourselves from the race and handing that leadership to other countries.”
Brain drain in the wind industry
Lundquist says there is still a lot of technical development and innovation to be done in the wind power industry – and if talented scientists and engineers in the US don’t see a promising future for themselves, they will work elsewhere. This is just one of many examples of how the Trump administration is causing a brain drain in the United States.
“Reactions from my European colleagues range from ‘I’m so sorry this is happening to you – how can we help?’ to just plain bewilderment at how quickly the world has changed in a direction that is anything but good,” adds Lundquist. “Some in Europe see the US giving up its leadership in this technical area as an advantage – but most in the industry would prefer that each country contribute creative solutions to the problems.”
Trump will not be able to destroy the wind industry, but he is doing real damage to wind power development, endangering not only energy sources but also jobs. At a time when many fossil industry experts are warning that a barrel of oil could soon cost $200, it would actually make sense to promote an energy source that is cheap, reliable and does not rely on imports from abroad. Trump seems more interested in tightening the screws on an industry that threatened the view from one of his golf courses two decades ago.
