What does the new occupant of the Oval Office think of wind farms? "They litter our country, they're littered all over our country like dropping paper, like dropping garbage in a field,” President Donald Trump said at a news conference before taking office a second time. “They're rusting, rotting, closed, falling down ... And they put new ones next to them because nobody wants to take them down, because why should they take them down? It's very expensive to take them down."

Wind is an energy source that “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,” Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Trump insisted that wind farms ‘obviously’ kill whales, although scientists have said there is no evidence to support that…” Not only that, he has said, they “kill all the birds” and cause cancer.

“We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Trump declared.

One fervent ally is Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who said he is working with Trump’s team to draft an executive order that would “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast. “This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a January 13 statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”

Wind provides about ten percent of the nation’s electricity, a portion that is growing. It accounted for 22 percent of new installed electricity capacity in 2022, and the wind energy 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,” Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told The New York Times. “The fact is that wind energy is cheap and clean American-made power.”

How much authority does the president have to thwart wind energy? Trump would not be able to control what is built on private land, Friedman and Plumer noted. 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.

Trump has a better chance of thwarting offshore projects than onshore. Coastal wind is a younger industry and requires an array of federal approvals, while land-based wind is a big industry in red states. Largely through delays in permitting, the first Trump administration hobbled what was a fledgling offshore wind industry.

The wind industry is working overtime to fend off the threats from the White House. Instead of touting projects as “clean and affordable,” renewables firms are highlighting their projects’ ability to “meet energy needs,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Some executives say they are pinning their hopes on Trump’s interior secretary, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. North Dakota is a coal and oil state, but under Burgum it also has welcomed wind energy, which provided 36 percent of its power generation in 2023.

The industry hopes that the president will back away from his “no wind” vow because of the nation’s growing appetite for electricity. “It’s all about demand right now,” said Jim Murphy, president and co-founder of Invenergy, a developer of renewables, transmission and natural-gas power. “If you look at the forecasts, we’re going to need everything as fast as we can get it.”