President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday that it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects off the East Coast.
“Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms,” DOI Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.”
President Trump “is bringing common sense back to energy policy and putting security first,” Burgum added.
In a separate news release, the DOI stated that the pause was also connected with “national security risks” identified by the Department of War in “recently completed classified reports,” according to reporting by Fox News.
According to the news outlet:
The department highlighted unclassified reports from the U.S. government in the past that have “long found” that massive turbine blades in large-scale offshore wind projects can create radar interference called “clutter” that can obscure legitimate moving targets and generate false targets.
In 2024, a Department of Energy report found that while the radar threshold for false alarm detection can be increased to reduce some of that “clutter,” the radar can “miss actual targets” when that threshold is increased.
However, on Monday the New York Times called the pause “a major escalation of President Trump’s crusade against offshore wind power.”
Hellbound and Down 