By: WindNewsToday Staff | Source: POLITICO
A New Roadblock: Personal Sign-Off Now Necessary to Approve Solar and Wind Projects on Federal Land
Trump Administration Halts Wind Projects on Federal Land! On a front the White House had hoped to leave untouched, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been ordered to sign off personally on all solar and wind project approvals on federal lands, in a sweeping change that could upend plans to expand renewables development in the country, according to a confidential memo obtained by POLITICO.
The directive, transmitted Wednesday to staff at the Interior Department, applies a new level of vetting to clean energy projects and complexes on hundreds of millions of acres across this huge swath of federally managed land, including some of the most sun- and wind-rich patches in the country.
Bottleneck to Approving Permits Along Large Areas of Renewable Land
The memo — written by Gregory Wischer, Interior’s deputy chief of staff for policy — stipulates that Burgum must sign off on “all decisions, actions, consultations, and other work” on wind and solar projects. That includes:
- Scoping reports
- Access road authorizations
- Cost recovery agreements
- Construction permits
- Environmental review stages
Such cradle-to-grave review would also allow the consideration of the greenhouse gas pollution and public health implications of the projects, officials familiar with the memo said, and could place a significant regulatory burden on billions of dollars of previous projects moving through the pipeline.
A Strategic Move Against Wind and Solar Growth
The directive would seem to fit into a larger effort by the Trump administration to reduce support for renewable energy. One recent executive order, signed earlier this month, declared a national energy emergency and asked federal agencies to do everything they could to bolster dispatchable energy sources—even though it didn’t include wind and solar on the list of power sources in that category, or no new solar and wind project approvals.
The federal land energy policy order also directs the Interior Department to review its existing policies to determine whether they give “preferential treatment” to renewables over traditional forms of energy like coal, gas and oil.
Effect on Trump Administration Halts Wind Projects on Federal Land
Now, federal lands energy policy generate some 4% of the U.S.’s renewable power, or about 8.9 GW, according to a 2024 report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The research as potential for:
- 5.75 TWp of utility-scale solar power
- 875,000,000 acres of potential land based wind energy
When environmental and social are in line, the realistic output will narrow down to:
- 1,750 GW for solar
- 70 GW for wind
That remaining development potential is put at risk by the new Interior directive.
Expert: “This Will Paralyze Renewable Energy Permitting.”
The former Federal Permitting Council executive director, Eric Beightel, who served under then-President Biden described the action as a “bureaucratic chokehold.”
“It will absolutely generate a huge amount of red tape that there is no way solar can move and wind can move at all fast or efficiency or even get over the line,” Beightel said to POLITICO.
“This is nakedly an effort to weaponize ‘the process.’
Interior Has Sharp Rebuke for Leaked Memo
In response to questions about the leaked memo, the Interior Department released a scathing statement:
“Let’s be clear: leaking internal documents to the media is cowardly, dishonest and violates professional standards,” a spokesman said.
“It’s a symptom of what is wrong in Washington today,” a spokesman for Mr. Cotton, James Arnold, said in a statement, adding, “It shows complete disregard for the hardworking people serving the American people.
Political Context: Bipartisan Support Turns to Administrative Clampdown
But having signed the bipartisan 2020 Energy Act to encourage development of clean energy on federal lands, President Trump is now retreating with new policies that would hit America’s wind and solar sectors hard. His administration is working to rewrite what constitutes, it deems, a project’s construction start, which could cut off access to vital tax credits for renewable energy — and put great big wind and solar projects at risk. The newly enacted “Big Beautiful Act” comes wrapped in new layers of regulation empowering federal agencies to block or slow clean energy development. Critics say this turn of events is a bureaucratically engineered assault on renewables that is seeking to quietly choke clean energy with red tape. In a bitter irony — that one of the key components of the legacy of renewables support put in place by Trump is Trump himself, under pressure from House Republicans — the President aligned to derail the progress of the nation toward a renewable future.
The whole thing has confirmed for our readers what Trump’s recent wave of executive orders and legislation has already betrayed: a bedrock political philosophy born of an even deeper conviction that renewable energy can’t be trusted, a conviction consistent with his past complaints that wind turbines are unsightly and job-destroying. This, even though federal figures indicate that wind and solar now employ more Americans than coal mining and oil-and-gas extraction combined.
Should these policies persist, the U.S. even risks lagging behind global clean energy leaders, especially in wind-rich and solar-rich places such as the Southwest, Midwest and offshore East Coast.
What This Means for the U.S. Transition to Clean Energy
The action could hobble Biden-era ambitions to pull down utility-scale renewables across federal land even as the administration charts a path to 2035 clean energy goals.
The term “energy transition” alludes to the transition happening worldwide — that is, from dirty, polluting fossil fuels (namely coal, oil and gas) to clean, renewable sources, like wind, sunlight, water (in the form of hydro) and heat from the earth. It also comprises increasing energy efficiency, upgrading power grids and integrating electric vehicles, batteries and low-carbon technologies.
And the transition to renewable energy and solar and wind project approvals isn’t simply an environmental necessity — it’s a strategic choice that will safeguard the nation’s economic and public health future. With fossil fuels still responsible for the majority of carbon emissions, the transition to clean energy — including wind and solar — is critical to addressing the threat of climate change and protecting the environment and the economy for future generations. Renewable energy also has national security benefits, by making the nation less dependent on imported oil and providing a more secure energy supply at home. Economically, the transition is an engine for job growth, with the clean energy sector expected to create millions of good-paying jobs across the country. And cutting air and water pollution gives a big boost to public health — to take just one consideration, we would have a lot less respiratory disease. As renewables become the cheapest source of power, families should get cheaper energy bills. By investing in clean energy now, we can keep the U.S. competitive in the global economy, drive innovation and secure an energy system we can rely on well into the future.
President Biden has articulated a strong goal that America be on a path to achieve 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 clean energy goals — a critical milestone on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050. This would involve spurring through more renewable energy like wind and solar, new plans for how to move electricity and invest in clean technologies. Under Biden’s plan, it’s crucial to use public lands as a place for staging large renewable projects — those that make meaningful contributions to our nation’s quest for energy independence and ability to lower utility bills, as well as stimulate job growth. The administration’s clean energy agenda is projected to create millions of union jobs, lower household energy bills and improve public health by slashing pollution. It will also be a long-term goal, aimed at not only addressing climate change but also seeing to it that clean, affordable energy is available to every American community: urban and rural, rich and poor. Now the Doug Burgum interior directive the renewable energy permitting delays and administration halts the solar and wind project approvals, altogether 2035 clean energy goals is far away to achieve.
The other danger is that if these policies stay in effect, the U.S. could very well fall grievously behind other global competitors in the market to scale green power production, given that we have more than 70 GW of land-based wind potential and more than 1,700 GW of solar power development technically available.
Lastly
About the federal land energy policy — this a War on Wind and Solar by Process not Policy. While no official nationwide ban on renewable energy has been offered, the combination of Interior Department control, tax credit reinterpretation and the passage of the Big Beautiful Act does suggest an increasing move against clean energy — not necessarily by outright ban, but by bureaucratic strangulation.
Even as Trump’s staff undercuts fairness and regulatory integrity, renewable energy permitting delays, people in the industry and the clean energy advocacy community are seeing the writing on the wall: a concerted effort to slow America’s clean energy future.
The memo – federal land energy policy, leaked on Friday is a sharp about-face for the Interior Department’s approach to solar and wind development and left some renewable energy advocates worried about the future of clean energy development on federal lands. Even though the memo itself has not been released to the public, the implications of its contents, first federal land energy policy reported by POLITICO, are already being felt and the clean energy industry.
📖 Source:
Politico – https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/16/interior-requires-burgum-sign-off-for-solar-wind-projects-00458999
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