Trump Promises to End New Wind Farms

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday that “no new windmills” would be built in the United States when he takes office, a direct rebuke of the Biden administration, which has approved 11 commercial-scale offshore wind projects.

In a meandering news conference, Mr. Trump angrily attacked President Biden’s decision this week to ban oil drilling off most of the U.S. coast and criticized federal spending on clean energy as throwing money “right out the window.”

But he saved some of his sharpest words for wind turbines, huffing new life into false claims he has made over the years about wind, an energy source he has bashed ever since he unsuccessfully tried to stop an offshore wind farm from being built in view of one of his Scottish golf courses. Mr. Trump insisted that wind farms “obviously” kill whales, although scientists have said there is no evidence to support that, and he said turbines “litter” the country and are like “garbage in a field.”

“We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump’s pronouncement may surprise leaders in some states — including Republican-led Wyoming, Iowa and Texas — where wind energy has rapidly expanded in recent years. Those states are typically larger, with more open space, and many are in the gusty middle of the country with some of the best potential for wind energy on the planet. In 2023, wind farms accounted for 22 percent of the electricity generated in Texas and 59 percent of the power produced in Iowa.

According to the Department of Energy, wind power is one of the fastest-growing and lowest-cost sources of electricity in the United States. It accounted for 22 percent of new installed electricity capacity in 2022, an amount the agency said represented $12 billion in capital investment. The industry employs more than 125,000 workers.

“The No. 1 state for wind energy is Texas, and it has been for two and a half decades, so this is a bipartisan energy source,” said Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.