What The Administration's Order Ending Wind Permitting Means for Onshore Wind

A cloudy outlook for one of American energy's biggest success stories

Last week, the Trump Administration issued an order temporarily halting permitting and leasing of wind projects, stating the government “shall not issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases, or loans for onshore or offshore wind projects.”

The implications for offshore wind are clear—because essentially all offshore wind projects are built at least three miles from shore, they exist in federal waters and the federal government has clear permitting authority. While this creates some uncertainty for a handful of offshore wind projects that have already secured federal permits and are in varying stages of development, it now seems no new offshore projects will move forward over the next four years.

Things are significantly cloudier onshore.

At first glance, onshore wind seems as though it will remain relatively unscathed. More than 95 percent of onshore wind projects are built on private lands, leaving the federal government without the same permitting authority it has over offshore projects. However, because of the scale of onshore wind projects and the complex regulatory regime developers need to navigate, several federal permitting processes or approvals can come into play.

Keith Martin, a long-time renewable energy attorney with the firm Norton Rose Fulbright, offered an essential primer of the full range of federal approvals that could apply to an onshore wind project. Among other federal approvals and permits, depending on the specifics of the project, onshore wind developers could require:

· An “incidental take” permit for protected species from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

· Clean Water Act Permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

· Approvals for projects on “prime farmland” from the U.S. Department of Agriculture

· Determinations of “no hazard” from the Federal Aviation Administration

· And various filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

As Martin notes, the legal ramifications of this policy on many of these permits and approvals is still uncertain, and in some instances, statutory authority may prevent an agency from withholding approvals.

This patchwork of federal authority over even onshore wind projects built on private lands, along with the anti-wind policy’s many shades of legal gray, led American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet to note, “the pause on federal permits would impact ‘probably more than half’ of all wind projects under development in the U.S.”

As Heatmap News reported, the renewable industry is scrambling to figure out exactly what this means for onshore wind: “It’s hard to avoid it if you’ve got anything sizable,” an attorney who works in the renewable energy industry told Heatmap, adding the total scope of impact is still unknown. “There’s nobody you could talk to who could have nearly all the answers [about Trump’s order]. And that includes developers and companies, because they don’t know either.”

Onshore wind projects can take up to a decade to develop and often require corporate investments totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars. With this level of uncertainty, in a best-case scenario there’s still likely to be a chilling effect. Companies prize certainty above all else when making large, long-term investments, and it’ll be that much harder to justify investing at that scale without knowing if they’ll even be allowed to build a project.

Wind energy now contributes roughly 10 percent of America’s electricity, cutting consumer costs by pushing down wholesale power prices, generating hundreds of millions in revenue for communities, employing tens of thousands of workers, and providing pollution-free power that keeps our air clean. And onshore wind, along with solar, is now the cheapest source of new electricity.

Unfortunately, renewable workers, host communities counting on wind project benefits, our power grid, and the climate will bear the costs of a market frozen by uncertainty.