Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for its elimination of wind energy projects across the country.
In one of his first executive orders earlier this year, President Donald Trump directed a federal review of existing onshore and offshore wind projects to determine whether their leases should be terminated or amended. Under the directive, the Trump administration canceled wind energy projects across the country and stopped issuing new leases.
“You cannot weaponize these things and just for political purposes put your thumb on the scale,” Stitt said while speaking at Semafor’s “Powering America’s Future” event. He did not mention the president by name.
In a statement to NOTUS on Thursday, a spokesperson for Stitt’s office said the governor “champions a ‘best of everything’ energy strategy that gets government out of the way and lets the free market compete.”
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“A reliable grid includes wind, natural gas, and other resources and requires a federal permitting process that does not weaponize regulation,” the statement continued. “Oklahoma has some of the lowest energy costs in the country. Governor Stitt is proud of our energy industry and will continue to fight to keep it strong.”
Stitt’s comments come after a federal judge on Monday ruled Trump’s order unlawful.
The order was “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law,” U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris wrote in a ruling issued Monday.
Saris’ ruling said the coalition of 17 states and Washington, D.C., that sued the Trump administration for issuing the order “have produced ample evidence demonstrating that they face ongoing or imminent injuries due to the Wind Order.”
A new report commissioned by the Department of Energy and released on Monday found the Trump administration can’t advance oil and gas infrastructure without pulling back some of its legal attacks on renewable energy.
The Trump administration has maintained that renewable energy permits granted under previous administrations should be revoked because they didn’t involve requisitely thorough reviews. Officials accomplished this by repeatedly invoking the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a statute that requires federal agencies to conduct a procedural review of most major agency actions and other environmental laws.
The report comes as House lawmakers are set to vote next week on the SPEED Act, a bipartisan permitting reform bill that would amend the language and reduce the amount of necessary environmental reviews that federal agencies have to carry out.
“China has very few wind farms. You know why? Because they’re smart,” Trump said at a Tuesday rally in Pennsylvania on affordability. “We don’t approve of windmills … Every time you put one up, only the guy that owns it makes a lot of money.”
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