Posted on August 18, 2025
At the end of July, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management revealed in a statement that it was revoking a designation of over 3.5 million acres of federal waters for wind development, effectively killing offshore leasing for the foreseeable future.
Critics say the Trump administration acted counterproductively to its stated goals of boosting energy security and independence.
What’s happening?
On July 30, BOEM announced that it would redesignate all Wind Energy Areas on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, making them ineligible for wind development.
The previous day, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum had announced that the Department of the Interior would no longer offer “special treatment” for wind centers.
Burgum also referred to wind technology as “unreliable” — flouting the recommendations of energy experts who say wind development boosts grid stability and would lower electricity costs in New England, particularly in winter, according to Aurora Energy Research.
“My read on this is that there is not going to be any leasing for offshore wind in the near future,” a career DOI employee told Canary Media.
Why is this important?
While no energy source is perfect, wind can be a highly beneficial part of the energy mix for multiple reasons, particularly when comparing it to the downsides associated with dirty fuels and considering advancements in wind technology.
For one, wind is one of the safest forms of energy in terms of death rates from accidents and air pollution — the latter of which directly contributes to millions of annual premature deaths. (Only solar and nuclear account for fewer deaths per terawatt hour of production, whereas coal, oil, and natural gas are the deadliest, per Our World in Data.)
Wind projects are also generally easier to build quickly at scale than dirty energy ones, making them a powerful near-term and long-term solution in mitigating oscillations in the grid. In other words, wind farms can help prevent widespread outages during times of stress, as the Wind Energy Technologies Office explained in a 2018 news release for the U.S. Department of Energy.
What’s being done about this?
Canary Media wrote that the revoked offshore wind areas “could hypothetically be redesignated by a future administration or the policy reversed,” according to the DOI employee.
However, many experts are scratching their heads because the designations already went through multiple rounds of approval and received input from the public.
The Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, and NASA were all deeply involved in the process — along with fishers, tourism operators, and other stakeholders — before one of the rescinded wind areas was approved, per Canary Media.
This comes as building a reliable grid may be more important than ever before, particularly with the boom of energy-intensive industries, such as artificial intelligence, that rely on data centers.
To that end, the White House announced in July it would facilitate a “rapid and efficient buildout” of infrastructure to support data center development as part of plans to usher in “a golden age for American manufacturing and technological dominance.”
However, critics fear the project’s focus on dirty fuels as part of its energy infrastructure will lead to an environmental and public health disaster. There is a silver lining, though.
While wind isn’t part of the data center plans, the Trump administration hasn’t closed the door on all clean or low-carbon energy projects.
The White House named geothermal and nuclear as valued energy sources to support data center infrastructure. You can make your thoughts known on the issue of clean energy by contacting your representatives and participating in community town halls.
