After Trump's Complaints, BOEM Rescinds All US Offshore Wind Study Areas

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has rescinded all Wind Energy Areas (WEAs), the designated study areas for offshore wind development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. The decision doubles down on the White House's "day one" executive order on offshore wind, which suspended all wind energy leasing processes on the OCS pending a review, and it aligns with the president's focus on side effects of wind farm development. 

"We will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They're killing us. They're killing the beauty of our scenery," said President Donald Trump during a press conference at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last weekend. 

Since 2013 - long before he became president - Trump has complained about Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm, an array of 11 turbines visible from his other Scottish golf course, Trump International Golf Links at Balmedie. He renewed his critique of wind turbines at length during last weekend's visit, noting that he could see the wind farm from the 18th hole. "People ought to know that these windmills are very destructive, they're environmentally unsound - because the environmentalists, they're not really environmentalists, they're political hacks, they're - these are people that they almost want to harm the country," he said Sunday. 

With this general directive from the president, on Monday the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it would be "ending special treatment for unreliable energy sources, such as wind." Interior said it would halt future offshore wind lease sales, and would consider whether to halt onshore wind development on some federal lands. 

On Tuesday, Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rescinded all Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) in U.S. waters. In a brief statement, BOEM said that it was "ending the federal practice of designating large areas of the OCS for speculative wind development." 

The revocation does not affect existing leases, but it ensures that already-suspended lease sales will not go forward.