“Several hundred megawatts” of planned onshore wind farms in the US remain on indefinite hold because of opposition from the Trump administration, Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO of Portuguese developer EDP, told Semafor. Last month, a federal judge ordered the Department of Defense to move forward with processing applications for wind farm licenses that had been held up over ostensible national security concerns.
But EDP has held up its own projects, d’Andrade said, over fear of wasting capital if future administrative blockages appear. “We have several projects we’d like to move forward with, but we can’t take the risk,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because they are good projects that would contribute a lot to reducing the cost of energy.” Still, he said, the company has no plans to pull back on its long-term $5 billion investment target for the US: “We’ve ridden out various different political and economic cycles before, and we’ll continue to be here for the long run.”