Steve Milloy: Stop falling for the wind turbine scam

President Trump absolutely hates wind turbines. He has cancelled several projects. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act terminated about $500 billion in subsidies for Green New Scam projects. A post-OBBBA Executive order prescribed heightened regulatory scrutiny of wind and solar projects to make it difficult to use the remaining Green New Scam subsidies.

So why are some Republican politicians and a deep red state bent on building them anyway?

Politico reported this week that Speaker Mike Johnson is lobbying Trump administration officials for what would be the largest U.S. offshore wind farm under construction by Dominion Energy off the coast of Virginia. Apparently, outgoing Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin can’t convince President Trump, so Youngkin and Dominion Energy are apparently trying some sort of end run around the president.

In Arkansas, the only thing holding up a massive project with 600-foot wind turbines is the valiant fight of locals in five counties who have passed ordinances against the turbine’s erection. And don’t forget that last minute changes to the Senate version of the OBBBA to save Green New Scam subsidies by Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Chuck Grassley almost sank the entire bill.

It’s important for all Republicans to understand why wind turbines are not MAGA.

As a threshold matter, wind turbines have no bona fide purpose. They have been marketed as “emissions-free” energy to combat the supposed “climate crisis.” But the latest data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicate, for example, that the average of summertime maximum temperatures in the U.S. in 2025 was actually cooler than those of summertime 1901, 124 years ago. Globally, August 2025 was the same temperature as August 1998, despite more than a trillion tons of emissions since 1998. No wonder President Trump calls emissions-driven climate change a “hoax.”

Even if there were some climate or weather problem caused by emissions of greenhouse gases, the simple math of the global situation is that the U.S. could stop emitting today and forever, and the vast majority of global emissions would happen anyway. So there’s no climate crisis and even if there were, wind turbines in the US would accomplish nothing.

Next, electricity from offshore wind is among the most expensive.  Wind farms are not built without taxpayers subsidies and additional guarantees by electricity consumers. There is absolutely no evidence that wind energy has lowered electricity prices anywhere in the world.

Wind may be free, but wind farm construction, operation and transmission of electricity is not. Moreover, wind energy requires back-up, usually from fossil fuel or nuclear baseload power plants. This redundancy is just an added cost.

Third, wind turbines are not environmentally friendly. The rare earth minerals needed for their construction largely come from anything-goes, strip-mining and processing in Communist China. Westerners rarely see the revolting consequences of these activities.

The construction of onshore wind farms take up vastly larger spaces, six to 13 times more, than conventional gas power plants. More than just the space, each onshore wind turbine has an immense and essentially permanent concrete and iron rebar foundation. Wind farmland is just ruined. The construction of offshore wind may have produced the dozens of dead whales that washed up on East Coast beaches during 2023-2024.

Fourth, wind farms are dangerous to the environment when they operate. Under normal circumstances they are a hazard to birds and bats. They require special government allowances to kill birds because the fines would be too great for wind farms to operate. The disintegration of an offshore wind turbine blade in 2024 wreaked havoc on Massachusetts beaches. And no one has yet studied the effects on the environment of the hot (140°F) cables bringing power from the offshore turbines to shore.

Finally, offshore wind turbines are a national security problem. Rep. Andy Harris (MD-01) issued this statement this week: “Massive offshore wind turbines—rushed through an abbreviated permitting process—could interfere with America’s ability to detect threats from adversaries like Russia and China. Submarines operating off the U.S. coast could gain a critical advantage if detection systems are disrupted, leaving the nation more vulnerable to attack.”

We certainly need more electricity, especially given the rise of AI data centers and President Trump’s goal of re-industrializing America. But that electricity should be provided at the lowest cost as determined on a subsidy-free basis. Electricity must be provided reliably, which means not dependent on nature or the weather. It should cause the least environmental damage and should not endanger national security. Wind, onshore or offshore, doesn’t make the cut when compared to coal, natural gas and nuclear power – i.e., President Trump’s energy agenda.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has received President Trump’s message loud and clear. This week he told a group of European leaders that: “Under this administration, there is not a future for offshore wind because it is too expensive and not reliable enough.” All Republicans need to get that message.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer, publishes JunkScience.com and is on X @JunkScience. This column first appeared in Daily Caller News Foundation and is used with permission.