US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

Result first (kill anything not carbon-based), find rationale later.

Same applies to how this admin forced layoffs at the green energy (hydro + nuclear) behemoth BPA [1] (which was funded entirely by ratepayers, not the federal government) then claimed an energy emergency to keep open coal plants serving the same geographies, coal plants that were already uneconomical and planned for shut down (or re-tooling to gas in the case of TransAlta's plant in WA). [2] Oh and they already re-hired some of the laid off staff at BPA because they overcut.

There is no point in taking these arguments at face value. It's an excuse generated after-the-fact, and in service of one outcome - kill renewable energy.

[1] https://www.columbian.com/news/2025/mar/12/letter-cuts-at-bp...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/doe-or...

Seems like "national security" has become a phrase that can be used to circumvent many laws, facts, and balance checks. Just like the word "terrorist." It seems like if these ever get challenged to the Supreme Court the current judges will rule with something like it being at the president's discretion.

So obviously the government can spend some of that $1T military budget on fixing their coastal radar.

I thought Massachusetts just won in court to get their money or construction resumed, wonder if this means they have to go back to court.

Here in Sweden a bunch of offshore wind farm project and even residential PV installations are blocked by the military for unspecified reasons that everyone assumes is that it blocks radar and other signal intelligence.

Even though you can partially work around the issue with better onshore equipment or just placing the stuff on the other side of the interfering equipment it is still a step down from not having any interference in the first place. Especially if you want to keep your listening equipment secret.

Even if it is a pretense, it is pretty obvious that this would allow ship-borne drones to use the wind farms as an effective screen. Putting radar platforms beyond the wind farms that are as capable as the existing land-based radars would be quite expensive in both capex and opex. Some of the existing land-based radars would likely need to be moved, ideally. No one was really thinking about this type of threat a decade ago.

That said, Democrats have also been trying to stop offshore wind farms for years (e.g. Vineyard Wind), so there is probably bipartisan support.

Bringing up a map of wind power deployments tells a more accurate story, what you see is a hot vertical strip in the center of the US. That is where it actually makes sense to deploy windmills, and people will continue to put them there even if subsidies end. It makes sense for the area, the amount of wind, the serviceability of the deployments, etc.

Off shore has always been politically contentious because it's much more dependent on subsidies, it's a battle for/against rent-seeking. One party is in favor of this particular kind of rent-seeking and the other party isn't (they will be in favor of a different kind, no doubt). The subsidies are necessary for these deployments to make financial sense, and if they went away, then it would just be a bad place to put a windmill.

There is no national security issue, there is no real case for energy infrastructure either. This use case needs government money to make sense, and is therefore sensitive to political fluctuations.

> So clearly this is politically motivated, and they're using what seems to be a real but solveable concern as a scapegoat.

I approve of this, because they were going to come up with an excuse one way or another, but "it's classified" has been a BS excuse that has received far too much deference to cover for all kinds of nonsense going back many decades, and being sufficiently flagrant about it is exactly what it takes to create enough of a backlash to finally do something about it.

Yea... I don't trust the motivations, but can confirm that on AA radars looking low (Where you might find UAS or just low-flying aircraft), wind farms show up as clusters of false hits.

Taiwan strait is filled with offshore wind turbines from both sides. This is not an issue for PRC nor Taiwan.

> Meanwhile China runs away with all the clean energy tech (solar, wind, batteries, etc, etc.) while we hold to fossil fuels to save less than 200,000 jobs.

If you're talking about coal miners, David Frum joked / observed that there are more yoga instructors in the US than coal miners:

* https://www.sfgate.com/columnists/article/Yoga-teachers-vs-c...

We've been in the realm of intentionally doing damage for a while now. But we got these cool red hats.

there are at least two reasons trump is pushing for oil:

1) the US has lots of oil reserves, which would lose lots of value if everybody was using renewables 2) oil is the main driver for dollar demand, as oil is paid in dollar, allowing the US to have lots of debt relatively cheaply

That's also the reason why he wants to tell Europe to stop using renewables, and that's the reason why he is threatening Venezuela - because they have the biggest oil reserve and started selling it in different currencies.

Now whether that whole genius strategy to gain wealth through geopolitics is worth an extinction event is a different story.

Intentionally doing damage started with DOGE. So, roughly day 1.

The intention is to make specific individuals a lot of money. It has been since day 1.

> What the... It seems we crossed into the realm of intentionally doing damage.

That began almost the moment this administration came into power.

china runs with everything. They are still expanding coal units for firming and they'll build a ton of new gas units too. But to ban deployment of wind turbines without any explanation is ... expected from current administration...

Reminiscent of how most water which used to melt into the Great Salt Lake is now being used to farm Alfalfa, which only makes up 1% of their GDP and far fewer jobs than other industries. Of course if this continues for another generation, toxic arsenic dust will pollute and force the failure of Salt Lake City and surrounding regions. Luckily this will cause the agricultural industry to fail (after killing many people) and nature will heal itself.

Short term punishment for states: ICE and the National Guard get sent into cities to make people feel unsafe, under the guise of an ‘immigration emergency’. Perhaps also Marines!

To punish more fully, just illegally withhold federal funds for whatever is most hurtful. Highways? Education? Healthcare?

And to your direct point, I’m sure someone could whip up a reason for the military to take over and shut down the sites if they don’t comply - this _is_ a national security matter after all.

Court system stops any of that? Just comply (or pretend to) with the letter of the ruling and try another barely-distinguishable but arguably different illegal method for the next few months while the gears of the court system grind.

What is _meant_ to stop the executive branch (meant to ‘execute’ the will of Congress, not just follow its own desires) going rogue is impeachment by Congress, but that seems like a far off prospect.

> just said "no go ahead, keep building"? What happens to the companies if they just keep building?

As the article also touches upon, this already happened in the particular case of Revolution Wind: There, work, was forced to stop in August, then in September a federal judge blocked enforcement of the block, and work continued:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/22/judge-orsted-revolution-wind...

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/offshore-wind-develo...

And “what happens” seems to be that rather than appeal, the rule-of-law deniers apparently choose to not care? Work has stopped again:

https://orsted.com/en/media/news/2025/12/revolution-wind-and...

These things take large amount of money from upstream, if the money is cut they can "say" what they want, nothing is getting done, from my understanding

I would imagine that most if not all will comply with illegal orders out of fear of retaliation, which is a very valid fear.

Don't expect any sort of mass disobedience here. Doing anything in offshore wind requires a large, highly-skilled organization and lot of time. One firm "ahem!" from the Coast Guard, Navy, or Treasury, and that kinda org will back down.

If things fall apart so badly that the CG, USN, and Treasury don't matter - then who's paying the bills for any offshore construction, and who's protecting anything that is built from looting or seizure?

That graph is not inflation-adjusted and basically says to avoid using it like this in the description:

> Average prices are best used to measure the price level in a particular month, not to measure price change over time. It is more appropriate to use CPI index values for the particular item categories to measure price change.

I’m not doubting that (inflation-adjusted) energy prices have gone up but this graph is misleading to represent it

FRED actually has a blog post about how you would go about calculating an inflation-adjusted priced graph here: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/11/fred-gets-real-unles...

The UK has tons of wind power but prices there are exceptionally high. Offshore wind isn't as cost effective as solar, it's the poster boy for high-cost, low-value renewable energy

The theory that the US government does those wars to keep oil prices high fits the timing way better than the opposite.

I still thinks it's missing important details, but the US making wars to get more oil doesn't fit reality at all.

> offshore wind requires a lot of rare earths for their magnets

compared to the general motor market in the USA? I think thats out by a few orders of magnitude.

Radar shadow is vaguely plausible, if your radar is shit and needs replacing.

it also requires your hydrophone network to not be working that well either.

This feels extremely plausible. I don't see anyone else saying this yet, well done.

Occams Razor: Trump openly hates windmills and green energy