By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general sued on Monday in a bid to block President Donald Trump’s move to suspend leasing and permitting of new wind projects, saying it threatens to cripple the wind industry and a key source of clean energy.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston argued that the decision by the Republican president’s administration to indefinitely pause all federal wind-energy approvals is unlawful and must be blocked.
The lawsuit, led by New York state, accused Trump of exceeding his authority and said his administration violated federal administrative law by not offering any detailed justification for the suspension.
“This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said in a statement.
The lawsuit seeks a court order declaring the indefinite pause unlawful and barring the agencies including the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing Trump’s directive.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers accused the Democratic attorneys general of “using lawfare to stop the president’s popular energy agenda.”
“The American people voted for the president to restore America’s energy dominance, and Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda,” Rogers said in a statement.
Trump announced the pause on his first day back in office on January 20 when he directed his administration in a presidential memorandum to halt offshore wind lease sales and stop the issuance of permits, leases and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects.
He did so while also moving to ramp up the federal government’s support for the fossil fuel industry and maximize output in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, after campaigning for the presidency on the refrain of “drill, baby, drill.”
Trump as a candidate last year promised to end the offshore wind industry, arguing it is too expensive and hurts whales and birds. In announcing the pause, Trump again cited the expense of wind projects and said they “ruin your beautiful landscapes.”
After Trump’s memorandum, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in April directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s acting director to order a unit of Norwegian energy firm Equinor to halt construction on its Empire Wind offshore wind project off New York.
The states in their lawsuit argue that Trump’s directive harmed their efforts to secure reliable, diversified sources of energy and jeopardized billions of dollars they have already invested in the industry as part of their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
In their lawsuit, the states said the agencies implementing Trump’s order never said why they were abruptly changing longstanding policy supporting wind energy development and were departing from government findings that wind projects can proceed with minimal adverse effects on the environment.
The lawsuit also said Congress never authorized the president to categorically halt wind-energy projects and that the agencies implementing the pause exceeded their authority under numerous laws including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, additional reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
