Overview
- U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued a preliminary injunction on Thursday ordering the Pentagon to resume its halted security reviews of onshore wind projects and to file status reports every 30 days.
- The Defense Department stopped routine reviews beginning last August and fully paused onshore wind reviews in April while it reassessed risks it says come from evolving adversary capabilities and potential turbine-driven radar Doppler interference.
- Plaintiffs — trade groups, wind companies and environmental organizations — say roughly 106–125 utility-scale projects in more than 20 states were stalled and that the pause put about $47 billion in potential investment at risk.
- At a recent court hearing government lawyers told judges reviews had resumed but could not identify a single active project moving through the process, a gap the court ordered the Pentagon to address with regular reports.
- The freeze is part of a broader administration push that has added regulatory hurdles, canceled offshore wind funding and produced settlements such as a reported $1.22 billion payment to RWE, raising risks of missed tax credits and canceled projects for developers.