The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

So, the Pentagon has been refusing to review new wind power projects, and now a group of renewable energy organizations have filed a lawsuit to end this mishugas.

About f%^$#ing time.

A coalition of renewable energy groups asked a federal court on Friday to order the Pentagon to resume reviews of onshore wind projects, in an attempt to end delays by the Trump administration that have brought the U.S. wind power industry to a standstill.

Since April, the Pentagon has stopped all military reviews of proposed wind farms, which are meant to ensure that turbines don’t interfere with local radar or flight paths. Virtually every new wind project in the country needs to undergo these reviews, which until recently were considered routine and often completed within months.

………

The delays have led to a “total halt of all wind development in the United States,” the groups told the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in a lawsuit filed against the Defense Department last week. At least 106 planned wind projects in 21 states have been stalled indefinitely, representing an estimated $47 billion in potential investment.

The delayed reviews are the latest in a series of extraordinary actions by the Trump administration to halt the expansion of wind power in the United States. On his first day in office, President Trump issued a moratorium on all approvals for wind farms on federal lands, and the Interior Department last year issued stop-work orders for five wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean that were already under construction. More recently, the administration agreed to pay several companies $1.8 billion to abandon their offshore wind plans.

Mr. Trump has called wind turbines ugly and expensive, and has instead pushed to meet rising power demand with fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

“My goal,” he said in January, “is to not let any windmill be built.”

One does hope that whatever judge gets assigned to the case makes it clear to the government that there is no presumption of regularity, and so they will have to provide evidence supporting every "and" and "the".