By Nichola Groom
Dec 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s freeze on approvals for major onshore wind and solar projects is leaving thousands of megawatts of clean power capacity in limbo at a time of soaring demand for electricity, a Reuters review of permitting data and interviews with industry officials shows.
Just one solar project has been approved on federal lands since Trump took office in January, and none have been permitted since July when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered that all new decisions related to renewable energy projects require his personal sign-off.
That compares to 13 solar and two wind projects approved on public lands under former President Joe Biden.
Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, has promised to fast-track energy infrastructure to meet rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers, declaring an “energy emergency” to keep the United States competitive. But that policy excludes wind and solar projects.
The bottleneck extends to renewable projects proposed on private and state lands too, because they often require federal permits for wildlife or water impacts or access roads, according to developers and government officials.
Reuters examined permitting databases maintained by the U.S. Department of the Interior and spoke with 10 industry representatives for this story.
Energy research firm Wood Mackenzie said it has identified 18 gigawatts of solar projects on federal lands that were canceled or are inactive due to limited development progress since the start of the year.
“It’s extremely detrimental to our industry because it just upsets the ability to deliver projects,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which estimates that more than 500 solar and storage projects are threatened by the freeze.
Last week, more than 100 solar companies penned a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to revoke the Interior Department policy, which they said amounted to a near moratorium on new permits.
“It is difficult to understand how these actions align with the President’s stated goals of unleashing American energy and ensuring energy affordability,” three Democratic senators, Michael Bennet, John Hickenlooper and Ben Ray Lujan, said in a letter to Burgum last month.
U.S. electricity demand is expected to increase 32% by 2030, with data centers accounting for more than half that growth, according to an analysis by power sector consulting firm Grid Strategies.
An Interior Department spokesperson defended its approach, without confirming the details of the Reuters reporting. “The Department continues its heightened oversight of wind and solar projects on public lands and waters to protect America’s national security and critical infrastructure,” the agency said in a statement.
The freeze of onshore projects has been happening quietly in the background of the administration’s very public assault on offshore wind, a nascent industry in the U.S. that has been hit with stop-work orders, funding cancellations and revoked approvals for fully-permitted facilities. A federal court ruled on Monday that the administration’s suspension of leases and permits for new wind projects was illegal.
Trump has repeatedly argued renewable energy sources like solar and wind are too expensive, receive unfair subsidies, and are less reliable than fossil fuels because they depend on the wind blowing or the sun shining.
Instead, the administration has moved aggressively to expand fossil fuel production, accelerating leasing for oil, gas and coal projects, and ordering a cut in permitting timelines for fossil energy projects and mines to no more than 28 days.
“President Trump’s energy dominance agenda unleashes our abundant resources like oil and gas, positioning the United States to win the AI race while simultaneously lowering energy prices and increasing grid efficiency,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email.
CLOUDS OVER NEVADA
Nevada, with its sun-soaked deserts, has emerged as the epicenter of the permitting slowdown, with more than 33 gigawatts of solar and battery storage projects on or adjacent to federal lands in various stages of development, according to Republican Governor Joe Lombardo.
Lombardo warned in an August letter to Burgum that federal delays threaten supplies to NV Energy, the state’s top power provider, and may hinder mining and data center expansions.
The solar projects named by Lombardo are being developed by divisions of NextEra Energy, Korea’s Hanwha and Japan’s SoftBank.
“Nevada remains committed to an all of the above energy strategy that includes responsible solar development,” Lombardo said in a statement to Reuters.
NextEra and SB Energy both declined to comment. Joo Yoon, the CEO of Hanwha development arm 174Power Global, said several of its projects are suffering from federal permitting delays, “and we are making every effort to resolve these matters in any way possible.”
An NV Energy spokesperson confirmed discussions with the Interior Department are ongoing but did not elaborate.
In October, two months after Lombardo sent his letter, the Bureau of Land Management canceled the environmental review for Esmeralda 7, a proposed complex of seven solar farms spanning 62,000 acres near Tonopah, Nevada.
The agency said developers may reapply individually.
The stakes are high for communities like Boulder City, a Las Vegas satellite community, that relies on revenue from solar projects on city-owned land. Leases on existing projects generate $21 million a year, or nearly 40% of the city’s operating budget, according to city officials.
Two new developments – Hanwha’s Boulder Solar 3, and Scout Clean Energy’s Boulder Flats – would add another $3 million annually. But both projects are waiting for a final sign-off from the Bureau of Land Management because a transmission corridor is under federal jurisdiction.
“They do not communicate with us,” Brok Armantrout, Boulder City’s revenue contracts manager, said of the city’s inquiries to BLM staff. “Even though the field office is here in Las Vegas, they’ve given us email addresses promising updates. And crickets.”
Scout Clean Energy, a unit of Brookfield Asset Management, declined to comment.
FREEZING WIND
Delays are rippling across the west.
In California, power provider San Diego Community Power renegotiated a supply contract for the 400-megawatt solar-plus-battery Purple Sage Energy Center project in Nevada in May after delays pushed its timeline back by a year, according to documents and video from an agency board meeting.
“There has been no movement or guidance from the Bureau of Land Management on review timelines,” SDCP’s director of power contracts, Kenny Key, told Reuters in a statement.
The project’s developer, Primergy, a division of private equity firm Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, had no comment.
Federal authorities also missed permitting deadlines for EDF’s 300-megawatt Bonanza Solar, a Nevada project that has a contract to provide power to two Los Angeles-area cities, Pasadena and Azusa, according to a federal permitting website.
And in September, Idaho Power asked the state’s utility regulator to cancel a 300-megawatt, 35-year contract with NextEra’s planned Jackalope wind project in Wyoming, citing federal permitting delays. A spokesperson declined to comment.
Wood Mackenzie has said federal permitting hurdles, combined with tariffs, could lower its U.S. onshore wind installation forecast by 22% through 2029.
Other agencies have also stepped up scrutiny of permits for wind and solar facilities, including those on private lands.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits to projects that impact streams or wetlands, announced in September it would prioritize projects that generate the most energy per acre to comply with Trump’s emergency declaration.
Sprawling wind and solar projects generate less power per acre than gas or nuclear plants, and have spawned criticism about aesthetics, threats to property values and the environment. But they are also faster and cheaper to build than alternatives like natural gas or nuclear power plants, according to the investment bank Lazard, which conducts an annual analysis of the cost of generation technologies.
The Army Corps said it has about 37 pending applications for solar and wind projects and added that applying the new policies should not meaningfully delay permit reviews. A spokesperson did not say whether any permits had been approved this year.
In another sign of obstacles now facing wind and solar development, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service restricted access to an online planning tool that developers of all kinds can access to quickly determine if a project overlaps with threatened species, migratory birds or their habitats and evaluate a facility’s impacts.
A notice posted on the website states that “solar and wind projects are currently not eligible to utilize” the tool until they are reviewed by Interior officials.
A service spokesperson said the change would improve coordination and create a faster and more predictable process. The agency did not say whether it was currently issuing permits to wind and solar projects. It does not maintain a public permitting database.
Renewable energy project proponents are now left wondering how long planned facilities can survive the stonewalling.
“When is the next presidential election?” Armantrout said when asked how long Boulder City is planning for the stoppage to last. “I know that’s a flippant answer, but it all depends.”
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Claudia Parsons)
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