What Does Trump’s Wind Power Pause Mean for California’s Floating Turbines?

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to temporarily halt approvals of new wind farms and reexamine existing leases.

“We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said to a cheering crowd at the Capital One Arena in Washington on Monday. “Big ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood,” he said, spinning his hand in a circle and whistling.

The sweeping freeze could chill an industry flush with investment cash from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, halt new leasing on federal lands and waters and block permits for wind farms across the country.

The order doesn’t pause work on wind farms with existing leases, but it does direct officials to find ways of “terminating or amending” these projects, of which there are currently five in the waters miles off the coast of California.

Developers plan to construct massive clusters of turbines attached to floating platforms — two near Humboldt Bay and three farther south, off Morro Bay. There are also plans to transform 80 acres of waterfront land in Humboldt meant to be a hub for offshore wind operators and their ships.

Were the Trump administration to try to claw back leases for California’s offshore wind farms, the state would no doubt sue.

Trump tried to rip up numerous environmental plans and policies during his first term, and California initiated many multi-state challenges to these efforts — and often won.

Already, public and private money has poured into the ambitious plan for floating wind power off the state. California’s first-ever wind auction went for $757 million. Last year, the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District received $426.7 million in money approved by Congress and intended to build and maintain offshore wind infrastructure.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D–San Rafael), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, co-signed a letter addressed to President Trump on Tuesday blasting the wind order and others that the House Democrats said put “polluters over people.”

More than 50 gigawatts of offshore wind energy are currently in development in U.S. waters, the letter said. “Halting these projects will eliminate thousands of good paying jobs and cut off an important source of energy when the grid is already straining to meet new demand.”

California’s clean energy targets are among the most ambitious in the world. In order to hit them, it must build renewable generating capacity faster than ever before — and the robust offshore wind projects are central to those efforts.

It wants to see 5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity installed by 2030, which would be roughly equivalent to the output of eight or 10 natural gas power plants. The goal quadruples by 2045.

The best wind potential in the country, if not the world, is off the Northern California and Southern Oregon coast. Without offshore wind, it would technically be possible for the U.S. to reach “net zero” by 2050, but it would be more expensive than tapping into what is right off the coast of California, according to researchers with Princeton’s Net-Zero America project.

Environmentalists bemoaned Trump’s order. Offshore wind is a reliable source of energy that could lower the cost of power for families and reduce toxic air and water pollution caused by dirty fossil fuels, they said. It is “essential to California’s transition to responsible, clean energy,” said Julia Rose Manriquez Dowell, a Sierra Club senior campaign organizer, in a statement.

“Instead of prolonging our energy dependence on harmful methane gas plants — as Trump is doing now — we need to be building out ports and turbines, creating a clean energy economy along our coast that boosts jobs and the health of our communities,” Dowell said.

Offshore wind industry groups took a different tack, arguing that floating wind turbines are a vast domestic resource that could be central to the Trump administration’s plans for what it has called “energy dominance.”

“A national energy emergency requires us to unleash all necessary sources of American energy — including offshore wind,” said Hillary Bright, executive director of Turn Forward, in a statement.