Next Upcoming
Rural America & The Clean Energy Transition at Climate Week NYC
By Canary Media
The Department of Defense has essentially frozen permitting for new wind installations over the last year, preventing more than 155 projects from moving forward.
A coalition of 18 states and Washington, D.C., has moved to join an industry lawsuit challenging the Department of Defense’s freeze on onshore wind projects in America.
It’s the latest in a nearly yearlong saga during which the Trump administration has obstructed more than 155 land-based wind projects across the country, according to data from the American Clean Power Association.
President Donald Trump has vowed to block the construction of wind farms during his second term, going as far as to claim that his administration would “try and have no windmills built in the United States.”
The administration has done its best to live up to that edict, waging an all-out war on wind farms, which last year generated more than 10% of the country’s electricity. The blockade has occurred against the backdrop of fast-rising utility bills, the product of high electricity demand that can only be met by building more energy capacity.
Trump’s attacks on offshore wind have been the loudest and most brazen, but onshore wind has not been spared. Last July, the Interior Department created a “choke point” for permitting new wind and solar projects on federal lands. One month later, in August 2025, the Defense Department quietly stopped issuing national-security approvals to onshore wind projects — a move that has impacted dozens of gigawatts of wind projects across both public and private land.
In April, a federal judge ordered the Interior Department to lift its blockade while a lawsuit led by industry groups makes its way through court, though the agency appealed the decision in June. In May, industry groups and wind developers filed suit against the Department of Defense’s permitting freeze, arguing that the delays created by the agency may threaten the viability of certain projects by causing them to miss deadlines to lock in expiring federal tax credits or to interconnect to the grid.
Nineteen attorneys general, all Democrats, filed a motion on Thursday to intervene in that suit and join the industry in requesting a court injunction against the DoD freeze. The motion argues that the DoD’s delay tactics could negatively affect grid reliability, energy affordability, climate goals, and jobs — and undermine state sovereignty.
The Trump administration claims the pause is necessary due to national security concerns. It provided a similar justification when halting work on all five in-progress offshore wind farms last year, but the argument was swiftly rebuked by federal judges five different times.
The DoD process is indeed meant to review wind projects for national security risks. Following the review, it is not uncommon for developers to take certain mitigation steps as directed by the military.
“For more than a decade, DoD engaged in a predictable review process and worked with developers to mitigate potential concerns,” according to a news release from the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. Now, “wind projects across the country have been frozen at various stages of the review process, including those that had already completed mitigation negotiations and were awaiting only final DoD approval.”
[Dan McCarthy](http://web.archive.org/web/20260722091811/https://www.canarymedia.com/about/people/dan-mccarthy)
is a senior editor at Canary Media.
This video requires marketing cookies.
Update your cookie preferences to watch the video.