Trump's allies are picking a fight with wind at state level – their first punch missed

Buoyed by US President Donald Trump’s strident criticism of wind power, industry opponents sense an opportunity to blunt its momentum in the country's heartland states – but suffered an early setback in Wyoming.

Trump has hurled a steady stream of invective against “dead and broken” onshore wind turbines, calling them cancer-causing and bird-killing eyesores that must be “ripped down as soon as possible.”

Pending completion of a “comprehensive assessment,” executive agencies must halt “new or renewed approvals, right of way, permits, leases, or loans.”

While most onshore wind development takes place on private property, his executive order does affect three projects in Wyoming totaling 2.15GW and a 900MW array in Idaho.

The federal government owns 62% of land in Idaho and 47% in Wyoming.

Previous President Joe Biden sought to aggressively promote renewable energy development on federal lands, which contain some of the nation’s best solar and wind resources. Doing so, he believed, would better enable the US to meet his ambitious climate targets.

Confident Trump will choke offshore wind development along the Atlantic coast, adversaries are taking aim at the industry in wind-belt state legislatures with Republican majorities.

An early test case seeking to build on Trump's federal agenda did not prosper, however.

In Wyoming, three prominent party senators this week failed to win majority support in a key state Senate committee to advance a bill that would have imposed a five-year ban on all new large wind and solar projects in the state. The committee has a Republican majority.

Senator Larry Hicks, a co-sponsor, argued that wind turbines were changing the state’s wide open landscape too far, too fast, thanks to federal subsidies, leaving the local coal sector as the loser. Wyoming is the nation’s top coal producer.

“Let’s slow down and let's analyse the ramifications to all of the things going on out there,” said Hicks.

The bill was opposed by multiple stakeholders including American Clean Power Association, a national trade group based in Washington, DC. Hicks' fellow Republicans opposed the ban, preferring to allow property owners decide whether to host turbines if projects pass muster with local elected officials and state regulators.

Banning wind would also run counter to Governor Mark Gordon's support for an all-of-the-above energy policy. His publicly stated his belief that climate change is a pressing crisis is not typically espoused by Republican state chief executives. It's also a stark contrast to the party's national leader Trump, who calls it a “hoax”.

Gordon's stance has drawn fire from his fellow conservatives in the state. He also supports renewables as part of an all-of-the-above energy policy

In Oklahoma, the number two wind state after neighbouring Texas, Republican lawmakers are targeting wind or renewable energy more broadly with about 20 bills.

“We all know these ‘green scam’ policies are not economically viable or even energy efficient,” she was quoted as saying at a rally last month against wind energy development.

Other bills would set tougher rules to site and permit wind turbines or create processes that could permanently ban them from some areas altogether.

How much success sector opponents will have in legislating restrictions on industry growth in wind-rich Republican states remains to be seen.

Most wind investment and job creation occurs there and the economic benefits wind in many rural localities cannot be replaced by fossil fuels that Trump embraces.