Posted on October 22, 2025
The Interior secretary predicted that the Republican megalaw would kill the U.S. industry.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum painted a dim picture of offshore wind Monday, asserting that passage of the Republican megalaw was the end of an industry that “makes no sense.”
At a panel hosted by the American Petroleum Institute, Burgum ticked through a litany of complaints about the besieged industry, repeating claims about its impacts on whales and interference with military radar.
“Intermittent, highly expensive wind is bad for everybody,” Burgum said.
Diatribes against wind from President Donald Trump and his Cabinet members have become common, and Burgum’s comments were no exception. The Trump administration’s attack on the industry has included preventing new projects, trying to halt ones under construction and trying to rescind permits.
At the event in Washington, Burgum rejected the possibility of allowing offshore wind projects to move ahead in exchange for Democratic support on a deal to streamline permitting.
“I hadn’t thought about the idea of trading something that makes sense for everybody in America for something that makes no sense,” Burgum said Monday in response to a reporter’s question. “And that’s sort of how I view offshore wind.”
Burgum asserted that “this offshore thing” only exists because of subsidies — which are being phased out by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“If anybody is continuing to build, their only argument is, ‘Oh, we’ve already started, and you should let us finish,’” Burgum said.
Researchers at NOAA have found no connection between offshore wind construction and operations and whale deaths. While some studies have found wind turbines could impair radar, proponents argue that those effects can be mitigated and point out that the Department of Defense plays a role in identifying offshore wind development areas.
Offshore wind proponents lambasted Burgum’s comments, calling them “baseless rhetoric.”
“The federal administration’s false charges and continued assault against offshore wind prevents shovel-ready, baseload power generation from reaching the grid while driving up electricity costs for ratepayers, stifling good-paying American jobs, and threatening to strand billions of dollars in U.S. investments,” Liz Burdock, the CEO of Oceantic Network, a group of offshore wind businesses, said in an emailed statement. She called the efforts to halt wind “shortsighted, detrimental energy policy.”
In a separate statement Monday, former USS Cole Commander Kirk Lippold said the Trump administration is “using the guise of national security” to nix green energy sources.
“It’s a false narrative to say that offshore wind turbines threaten national security,” Lippold said. “There are a lot of options, including operator training, that can mitigate many of those issues.”
But the administration has nonetheless honed in on a range of complaints about offshore wind in its attempts to hinder renewable projects while it aims to boost fossil fuels production.
Burgum said Monday that the administration’s efforts were “not an ideological battle” and that agencies have been working to conduct a review of all offshore wind leasing that Trump ordered in January.
At the event, API CEO Mike Sommers said there’s growing, bipartisan consensus that the United States needs to be ready to meet rising energy demand — pointing to power-hungry data centers and advanced manufacturing that’s driving “an unprecedented surge in power use.”
But he said outdated permitting laws are the major obstacle standing in the way of building the energy infrastructure the United States needs.
Last month, API issued a policy road map for Congress calling for a modernization of the country’s permitting system. In the document, the trade group said that “everyone else has deadlines — the government should too.”
API’s campaign is a “durable, bipartisan plan built around three core pillars: set deadlines and enforce them; stop lawsuits and start building; targeted reviews and swift decisions,” Sommers said Monday. Implementing the pillars means changing laws like the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Natural Gas Act, he added.
Meanwhile, as Burgum boosted oil and gas development and poured cold water on renewables Monday, he framed the administration’s push in political terms ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“The elections next fall are not going to be about CO2 emissions,” he said. “They’re going to be about: ‘Can I afford my electric bill?’”