The Trump administration has been battling to stop wind power projects in the United States citing various dubious reasons such as national security, danger to birds and whales, and even cancer risks. The President has had a personal vendetta against wind energy for more than a decade since he was unable to stop a wind turbine project near his golf course in Scotland. The executive orders to halt wind-energy leases and permits last year were ultimately overturned by the courts, allowing projects such as five offshore wind projects in the Northeast to continue.
These fits and starts of wind projects have made life difficult for thousands of union workers tied to the projects.
In June, the administration abandoned an effort to try to halt all wind projects and leases across the US, no longer challenging court decisions that eliminated the freeze in permitting and leasing for wind projects.
The new strategy for the administration is to buy out wind project leases. So far, the Department of the Interior has completed four deals to cancel wind project leases, paying energy development corporations more than $2.6 billion in taxpayers’ money to not build wind energy projects. This includes paying $765 million to the company Invenergy to abandon four wind projects in California, New York, and Maine, as well as nearly $900 million to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore wind leases in New York and California.
Union leaders note that not only do wind projects help to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy security, they also provide good-paying union jobs for thousands.
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References:
Why take those jobs away?’: the unionized workers decrying Trump’s war on wind
