The Pentagon’s wind farm blockade is over — for now

The U.S. Department of Defense has for months refused to conduct routine military evaluations of proposed onshore wind farms, creating a de facto moratorium on the clean energy source at a time of exploding electricity demand.

On Thursday, a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump ordered the agency to resume its reviews — and put an end to that freeze on wind projects. The preliminary injunction requires the DoD to report to the court on its progress every 30 days while the legal case proceeds.

“The court just stopped the Trump administration from misusing a long-standing review process to block the clean, affordable power that Americans need,” Phelps Turner, senior attorney, U.S. Clean Energy, at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. ​“For months, wind projects capable of supplying millions of homes and businesses with low-cost power have been needlessly obstructed, as electricity costs and demand soar.”

The DoD delays, which began in August 2025 and ramped up to an outright halt this spring, have affected more than 155 projects across 21 states. The Trump administration has cited national security claims to justify this freeze, echoing arguments it made when stopping work on five offshore wind farms late last year. Those stop-work orders were all rejected by the courts.

The renewable energy groups that brought the suit contend that the freeze was never about national security — it was about furthering Trump’s war on wind energy.

Demand for electricity is rising quickly as data centers clamor to connect to the grid. This mad dash for power threatens to drive further increases in electricity costs, which have already ballooned under Trump despite his campaign pledge to cut bills in half.

Wind energy could help ease those rising costs: The energy source already supplied 10% of U.S. electricity last year, and onshore wind is the cheapest form of energy generation to build, according to investment bank Lazard.

Nevertheless, Trump has doggedly pursued a different campaign promise: blocking all wind farm construction.

His administration has fallen short of that dramatic goal — in fact, in June, the largest wind farm in the U.S. went online — but it has notched successes, too.

The administration has crushed the offshore wind industry, with the exception of the five installations off the East Coast. It ripped away tax credits for wind developers in last year’s sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And in August of last year, it scrapped the beleaguered Lava Ridge Wind Project, a 1-gigawatt onshore wind project that the Biden administration had approved for construction on public lands in southern Idaho.

The DoD freeze is not the first time the Trump administration has used agency reviews to create delays for wind developers.

Last July, the Interior Department created a ​“choke point” for permitting new wind and solar projects on federal lands by insisting that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum personally sign off on certain permit approvals. In April, a federal judge ordered the Interior Department to lift its blockade while a lawsuit led by industry groups makes its way through court, though the agency appealed the decision in June.

These delays have real stakes. Wind developers that hit certain construction milestones before July 4, 2026, locked in federal tax credits before they expired. But they need to finish construction within four years to receive those discounts.

Further delays, whether from the DoD or from another tactic at a different agency, could cause developers to miss those deadlines — and put projects on shaky financial ground.