WASHINGTON (Minnesota Reformer) – The Trump administration’s de facto freeze on wind energy puts 1,200 construction jobs, 4,400 “indirect and induced” jobs and more than $168 million in economic impact at risk for Minnesota, according to a new report from a St. Paul-based progressive think tank.
The U.S. Department of Defense has stopped completing the mandated — and once-routine — national security review process for proposed wind farms. As a result, Minnesota could lose four wind energy projects that could generate enough power for several hundred thousand homes, North Star Policy Action says.
The apparent Pentagon work stoppage is stalling more than 250 wind projects nationwide. If the Minnesota projects don’t move forward, the state stands to lose around $1.6 billion in direct investment.
Aaron Rosenthal, research director for North Star Policy Action, said the freeze usurps local control of energy permitting and threatens an industry that provides significant benefits to rural Minnesota communities. The wind industry directly employed 2,870 Minnesotans in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Minnesota has spent decades building one of the strongest wind energy economies in the country, and the federal government is now actively dismantling that through a permitting process turned into an indefinite roadblock,” Rosenthal said.
North Star Policy Action’s report said the combined output of the four projects would be 1,119 megawatts, or more than the twin reactors at Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island nuclear power plant.
Minnesota is transforming its energy mix in the runup to a state mandate for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040.
A spokesperson for North Star Policy Action told the Reformer the group is withholding the names of the affected projects at the developers’ request for “fear of further retaliation.”
U.S. wind energy development and production soared during President Trump’s first term thanks to a federal posture of benign neglect. The industry got more overt federal support during President Biden’s term, which saw hundreds of billions of dollars in renewable energy grants, loans and tax credits authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Trump has been far more antagonistic toward the industry since retaking office last January, however. His second-term policies reflect a longstanding antipathy toward wind turbines rooted in his unsuccessful fight against a project visible from a golf resort he owns in Scotland.
“We have not approved one windmill since I’ve been in office. And we’re going to keep it that way. My goal is to not let any windmill be built,” Trump said in March.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order freezing onshore and offshore wind permitting. That order remained on the books until last month, when the administration said it would stop defending it in court. Later in 2025, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — formerly the governor of North Dakota, which gets more than a third of its electricity from wind — said he would have to personally sign off on all federal permits for wind and solar, a move industry groups said would dramatically slow approvals. And following an unsuccessful attempt over the winter to stop five offshore wind projects under construction off the Northeastern seaboard, the administration has resorted to buying developers out of leases for offshore wind farms that haven’t yet begun construction.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission lists 10 wind energy projects actively seeking state permits, a lengthy process developers typically follow as they seek approval from local and federal authorities. Several others are in earlier stages of development.
Minnesota utilities’ long-range resource plans lean heavily on wind, which is often the cheapest source of power in the breezy Upper Midwest. Xcel Energy, Great River Energy and Minnesota Power want to add nearly 5,000 megawatts of wind over the next few years, North Star Policy Action says. That’s enough to power more than a million homes.
The American Clean Power Association, a trade group, first raised concerns about the Department of Defense’s halt to national security reviews this winter. In a March 9 letter to the DoD official responsible for those reviews, ACP chief policy officer JC Sandberg cited “numerous instances” in which the department had failed to send finalized agreements to the Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for ensuring wind turbines don’t interfere with aircraft and radar systems. Many of those agreements were negotiated at least six months earlier, Sandberg said.
Nine clean energy groups sued the Department of Defense last month in an effort to break the logjam. ACP was not among them, but Jason Grumet, its CEO, told the New York Times that “we need the U.S. government to carry out normal review and permitting processes to keep the lights on for American families and businesses.”
Wind energy has even flourished in states less associated with environmental protection. Oil-rich Texas, for example, hosts more turbines than any other state and generates more than 25% of the country’s wind power.
Blake Nixon, president and CEO of Bloomington-based Geronimo Power, said in an interview before North Star Policy Action released its report that the permitting freeze was likely to worsen a downturn caused by electric transmission bottlenecks and supply chain challenges.
“It’s a huge threat to the wind industry,” Nixon said. Though many Midwestern wind developers have pivoted to build solar farms, grid batteries or gas-fired power plants, wind remains “a really valuable tool as a low-cost producer of electricity in places where you have adequate land, willing communities and a great wind resource,” he added.
Geronimo is developing three wind farms and a solar-and-battery installation to support a proposed data center in southwestern Minnesota. Nixon said the company is exploring alternative locations for the data center after county officials denied a land-use change for its preferred site.
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