250+ onshore wind projects stalled as Pentagon freezes permitting
Reprinted from Canary Media
By Kathryn Krawczyk
8 May 2026
The Defense Department has stopped once-routine reviews that even wind projects on private land need to pass, jeopardizing a power source that could help meet skyrocketing demand.
The Department of Defense has brought reviews of wind projects on private land to a standstill as it evaluates their national security impacts. (Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
For the past 15 years, onshore wind projects have followed the same process to get the Department of Defense’s permission to build. Now, that familiar route has been closed off, effectively jeopardizing all new wind projects on private land — more than 250 nationwide — and threatening to sideline 30 GW of potential generation capacity, according to the American Clean Power Association.
All wind projects in the U.S. must first head through the Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse, where, in the DOD’s own words, they’re supposed to undergo a “timely, transparent, and repeatable process to evaluate potential impacts” to national security and military operations. It’s a routine that has spanned presidencies, including the first Trump administration, and that typically revolves around making sure turbines don’t interfere with radars or federal airspace.
If an issue arises, developers and the DOD usually come to a mitigation agreement that resolves both parties’ concerns. These deals are often settled in a matter of days, the Financial Times reports. But the DOD hasn’t signed off on a mitigation agreement since last August, the American Clean Power Association says, leaving at least 60 wind projects that were already in formal negotiations awaiting sign-off from the DOD.
The DOD never officially announced or even acknowledged the pause until this April, when the department escalated its efforts and sent a letter to developers saying it was reevaluating how it reviews wind projects’ national security impacts — a tactic the Trump administration has used in its attempts to derail offshore wind farms, too. Now, reviews of all onshore wind projects are subject to a “de facto moratorium,” says American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet, with no end in sight.
Such delays are costly for developers, which must continue paying to lease land and maintain grid connections as their timeline for generating power and revenue grows longer. The extra wait also puts companies at risk of missing key deadlines for securing federal tax credits — deadlines that President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act shortened dramatically.
Trump is keeping gigawatts of clean and cost-effective power off the grid at a time when the nation desperately needs more of it to power data centers, factories, and electric appliances coming online. While his claims of national security risks may be questionable, his devotion to gutting “windmills” certainly is not.
Maria Gallucci contributed reporting.
PHOTO/Wikipedia Commons
