The Pentagon is delaying wind power development — even on private land

By Ella Nilsen, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration is doubling down on efforts to delay the buildout of wind energy, this time focusing on land-based wind projects, according to a clean energy trade group.

Citing national security risks to US military readiness, the Pentagon is slow-walking the reviews of 165 land-based wind projects, according to the American Clean Power Association, the leading group representing wind and solar developers.

The Pentagon, in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration, has historically reviewed large wind projects, ensuring towering turbines don’t mess with radar or flight paths. Typically, those reviews have been resolved quickly, but standard times started stretching longer starting around August 2025, the association said. Some reviews of individual projects have now gone over six months, according to a letter ACP wrote to the Pentagon asking about the delays, which was shared with CNN.

ACP CEO Jason Grumet said in a statement the Trump administration was “abusing the current permitting system.”

The Pentagon is “actively evaluating land-based wind energy projects to ensure they do not impair national security or military operations, in accordance with statutory and regulatory requirements,” a spokesperson for the agency said.

The spokesperson did not say how long the reviews would take to complete but called the process “inherently complex and time-consuming.”

In a letter to ACP reviewed by CNN, a Pentagon official wrote that wind turbines and their transmission infrastructure “have the inherent potential to adversely impact or impair military testing, training and operations.”

President Donald Trump has made his distaste for wind energy clear, and his administration has stymied wind energy developments in several ways. Late last year, the administration issued stop-work orders for all major offshore wind projects under construction, a move that was later overturned by the courts. The administration has also settled three deals with developers of more nascent offshore projects, paying back lease fees to the tune of nearly $2 billion in taxpayer dollars for the projects to not be built.

“The Trump administration has been critical about renewables in general, but it does appear that President Trump disfavors wind turbines more than solar,” said Timothy Fox, managing director at energy consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners.

The federal government has had more leverage to stop offshore wind projects because they are all being built in federal waters, Fox said. Onshore wind is more likely to be built on private land, but some projects still need federal permits in order to cross the finish line. Those permits, whether from environmental agencies or the military, have become a choke point.

“Projects that are further (along) have a better chance, but just because you’re near the end, if you have an important permit that’s still pending with the Trump administration, that could be it, that could be a reason to walk away,” Fox said.

A federal judge recently ruled against a series of actions the Trump Interior Department had taken to slow down federal permitting reviews for wind and solar projects, after a coalition of renewable power groups sued. However, it’s unclear what legal precedent that case could set for the military’s slowed reviews of projects.

All told, the military delays are holding up a significant amount of power from getting onto the grid — around 30 gigawatts, according to the American Clean Power Association. That’s enough energy to power millions of homes, even though wind power is more intermittent.

Administration officials singling out wind was counterproductive to ongoing bipartisan Congressional talks on reforming the federal permitting system for all forms of energy, Grumet said.

“It’s incoherent to pursue that goal while actively blockading domestic energy production that will help meet our growing energy needs and keeping energy affordable for American families,” he said in a statement.

Despite the bureaucratic roadblocks, wind projects are still coming online. The mammoth 3.5-gigawatt SunZia wind project in New Mexico recently turned on after decades of delays and is now sending power to California on a towering 550-mile transmission line snaking through the desert.

Wind, solar and big batteries to store the power they produce continue to be the lion’s share of new energy currently getting connected to the grid, Fox said. Solar and long-duration storage batteries, especially, will only continue to grow.

Solar, wind and batteries “still dominate” the energy sources getting onto the grid, Fox said.

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