President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday that “no new windmills” would be built in the United States when he takes office, a direct rebuke of the Biden administration, which has approved 11 commercial-scale offshore wind projects.
In a meandering news conference, Mr. Trump angrily attacked President Biden’s decision this week to ban oil drilling off most of the U.S. coast and criticized federal spending on clean energy as throwing money “right out the window.”
But he saved some of his sharpest words for wind turbines, huffing new life into false claims he has made over the years about wind, an energy source he has bashed ever since he unsuccessfully tried to stop an offshore wind farm from being built in view of one of his Scottish golf courses. Mr. Trump insisted that wind farms “obviously” kill whales, although scientists have said there is no evidence to support that, and he said turbines “litter” the country and are like “garbage in a field.”
“We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump’s pronouncement may surprise leaders in some states — including Republican-led Wyoming, Iowa and Texas — where wind energy has rapidly expanded in recent years. Those states are typically larger, with more open space, and many are in the gusty middle of the country with some of the best potential for wind energy on the planet. In 2023, wind farms accounted for 22 percent of the electricity generated in Texas and 59 percent of the power produced in Iowa.
According to the Department of Energy, wind power is one of the fastest-growing and lowest-cost sources of electricity in the United States. It accounted for 22 percent of new installed electricity capacity in 2022, an amount the agency said represented $12 billion in capital investment. The industry employs more than 125,000 workers.
“The No. 1 state for wind energy is Texas, and it has been for two and a half decades, so this is a bipartisan energy source,” said Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“The fact is that wind energy is cheap and clean American-made power,” Dr. Stokes said. She said data shows wind farms also can be built faster than gas plants. “If we’re going to have energy shortages because of things like A.I. and data centers, why wouldn’t we try to build cheap, clean and fast power?” she said.
As president, Mr. Trump would not be able to control what is built on private land. He would have influence, but not absolute authority, over whether wind power can be produced on federal lands and waters. If the government has already issued leases for wind farms, then legally, companies must be issued permits if they choose to move forward with projects.
Jason Grumet, the chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, which represents renewable energy companies, criticized both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
“Whether it’s withdrawing offshore oil and gas resources from development or threatening policies that harm wind energy, American presidents shouldn’t be taking American resources away from the American people,” Mr. Grumet said.
To date, companies in the United States have built more than 153 gigawatts of wind power capacity, with more than two-thirds of that in states carried by Mr. Trump in the November election, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota and Indiana.
An additional 24 gigawatts worth of wind farms is currently under development, with major projects planned for Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas, according to the American Clean Power Association.
Still, the wind industry has faced a backlash from rural communities worried about disruptions from new turbines the size of skyscrapers. More than 400 counties have imposed local restrictions or bans on wind turbines to date, including much of Tennessee and Kentucky. And the pace of U.S. wind installations has slowed in recent years as developers faced difficulty in securing connections to the electric grid and delays in getting government approvals for new projects.
Mr. Trump also said that electricity produced by wind turbines was more expensive than generating power from gas. Direct cost comparisons can be difficult. Even without federal subsidies, it is often cheaper to build a wind farm to generate electricity than it is to build a combined-cycle gas turbine and produce the same amount of power, according to data from Lazard, an investment firm.
However, the wind farm may require costly long-distance transmission lines and needs to be backed up by other sources, since the wind blows intermittently. By contrast, a gas plant can run on demand. In recent years, many electric utilities have concluded that it’s most cost-effective to build a mix of resources: wind, solar as well as gas.
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