Posted on January 27, 2025
One of the hundreds of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office leaves the future of wind energy in North Carolina and off its coast in limbo.
Monday, Trump signed an executive order that prevents new leases on the entire Outer Continental Shelf until the order is revoked. It also prevents the federal government from issuing new permits to both onshore and offshore wind projects until the secretary of the Interior completes a “comprehensive assessment and review” of permitting practices.
There are four sections of the Atlantic Ocean leased for offshore wind development off the North Carolina coast, including two off of Kitty Hawk and two off of Brunswick County. With the Trump executive order, all four projects are seemingly paused, with would-be developers holding leases but unable to obtain the required permits until either the administration shifts its policy or there is a change in the White House.
In a statement, Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said he would continue to advocate for wind at both the state and federal level. Roy Cooper, Stein’s predecessor, issued a 2021 executive order setting state targets of 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 8 gigawatts by 2040.
“Halting offshore wind represents a huge step backward in our efforts to advance a clean energy future and damages the state’s economic opportunities. North Carolina has the best wind energy potential on the eastern seaboard, enough to generate as much power as six nuclear power reactors. Investors have signed leases and invested significant resources. They deserve certainty,” Stein said.
In a release, the Southeastern Wind Coalition warned that halting progress on leases in the region could risk as much as $25 billion in future investment in the industry and threaten jobs. Katharine Kollins, the wind advocacy group’s president, also referenced another Trump executive order, warning that pulling energy generation off the table could exacerbate what Trump has declared to be an “energy emergency.”
“Wind energy is a vital part of the global electricity system, and ceding the advancement and development of wind technologies to other nations will only set us back,” Kollins wrote in a statement. “In a time of energy emergency, an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to achieve American energy dominance must include wind along with all readily available domestic power sources.”
Demand for electricity is spiking, both in North Carolina and nationally. Nationwide, power sector consulting firm Grid Strategies has projected that demand is going to rise about 15.8% in the next five years, a significant increase from even two years ago with additions driven by data centers and manufacturing. In the Carolinas, Duke Energy has updated projections to say its expected 2033 peak demand increased about 2.1 gigawatts between spring and fall 2023 because of economic development projects.
Wind energy and North Carolina’s plans
In the most recent resource plan approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission, Duke Energy was directed to start considering sites that would allow it to add 1.2 gigawatts of onshore wind energy by 2033, including 300 megawatts by 2031. That work would include site selection, choosing development partners and starting to consider grid upgrades.
Filings Duke made in the most recent resource plan indicate that wind energy is a solid complement to other energy sources. It continues to generate overnight and in cloudy conditions unlike solar and is not dependent on a fuel source whose prices can fluctuate like natural gas.
There are currently no onshore wind projects in Duke’s territories in North or South Carolina. A preliminary siting study conducted for the company found 89 places in the Carolinas with sufficient wind speeds to generate power that are within three miles of existing infrastructure and that are not located near areas the military uses.
While much of onshore wind permitting happens at the state and local level, there are also key federal approvals, said Karly Lohan, the Southeastern Wind Coalition’s program manager for the Carolinas. Those could include determinations from the Federal Aviation Administration about whether turbines will impact air traffic, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Act approvals that allow developers to incidentally harm certain species during construction, and approval from the U.S. Department of Defense Clearinghouse, among others.
Some work, like siting and moving through interconnection queues, could still happen while the Trump orders are in effect. But without the permits, construction is not possible.
“We’re also interpreting this as a halt for onshore wind,” Lohan said.
NC’s offshore wind projects
Additionally, the Utilities Commission directed Duke to take steps to procure 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind between 2034 and 2035 to help replace energy from coal plants that are slated to retire and meet demand peaks on cold winter mornings.
As part of that, the commission told Duke to generate an “Acquisition Request for Information” to gather data about potential risks of building offshore wind and the scale of what would be needed to reach the procurement target. The document would also include technical information about things like supply chains and construction vessels.
“We are evaluating all the Presidential Executive Orders that have come out this week, including the Executive Order on offshore wind. We look forward to working with the new Administration on constructive outcomes to ensure reliable and affordable energy for our growing customer base,” Bill Norton, a Duke spokesman, said in a written statement.
Further complicating matters, a non-regulated subsidiary of Duke called Cinergy Corp. holds the offshore wind lease to a 55,154-acre area off Brunswick County that the company has said could power up to 375,000 homes.
Nearby, TotalEnergies holds the offshore wind lease to a 54,937-acre section of ocean. TotalEnergies did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how the executive order could impact its part of Carolina Long Bay, which the company has said would be able to power about 300,000 homes if fully developed.
Further up the coast, Dominion Energy last fall purchased the lease for about 40,000 acres on the northwestern edge of the area once known as Kitty Hawk Wind from Avangrid, the original leaseholder. The Dominion-held area is expected to be able to power about 200,000 homes with the 800 megawatts it can generate.
The area Avangrid held onto is capable of producing about 2.4 gigawatts of power.
Dominion renamed the northwestern area CVOW-South, a nod to the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project it is currently building off of Virginia Beach.
Unlike the projects off of North Carolina’s coast, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is able to keep advancing because it has obtained all of the necessary permits. In its most recent resource plan, Dominion indicated that it could finish building CVOW-South in the mid-2030s.
“At this time, we do not have a firm timeline or cost for developing this lease area. We continue to review the executive order and until the Secretary of the Interior is installed in office, we don’t want to speculate about how the lawfully executed lease for CVOW-South may be impacted by the executive order,” Jeremy Slayton, a Dominion spokesman, wrote in a statement.