A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a series of decisions that wind and solar developers say have throttled hundreds of renewable energy projects across the country.
Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy developers filed against the Interior Department in December. The developers argued that the Trump administration was unlawfully discriminating against wind and solar power, impeding projects on public and private land.
In her ruling, Judge Casper, an Obama appointee, said the developers were likely to prevail on the merits and ordered the Interior Department to stop implementing a series of memos, issued last year, that subjected renewable power to intensified reviews and new restrictions.
The coalition that filed the lawsuit — including RENEW Northeast, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, the Southern Renewable Energy Association and Interwest Energy Alliance — applauded the ruling. “Our coalition has demanded and received an immediate halt to the Trump administration’s unlawful permitting actions, which have discriminatorily placed wind and solar technologies into second-class status,” the coalition said in a statement.
It is unclear whether the Trump administration will try to appeal the ruling. The White House referred questions to the Interior Department, which said that it does not comment on litigation.
The ruling marked the latest legal setback for the Trump administration in its efforts to thwart wind and solar power. In five different cases this year, federal judges have struck down efforts by the Interior Department to halt construction of wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean.
President Trump has largely scorned wind and solar power, seeking instead to promote fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal. The latest case centers on a series of Interior Department actions that greatly slowed or restricted federal approvals for wind and solar projects.
In July, the agency issued a memo saying that a wide array of federal decisions and consultations on wind and solar projects that are typically carried out by career employees would be subject to new layers of review by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s office. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also issued new restrictions for renewable energy projects.
Those actions brought federal permitting for many renewable energy projects to a standstill, developers have said. Career staffers were unsure how to move forward with once-routine work such as approving plans for access roads. Former Interior Department officials said it was unworkable for the secretary to review each of the hundreds of small decisions needed to approve projects, creating lengthy delays.
While fewer than 5 percent of solar and wind projects are on lands directly overseen by the Interior Department, even developers that build on private land often need federal approvals. If, for instance, a solar or wind farm is going to disturb nearby wetlands, the developer may need a water permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which in turn often consults with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to gauge the effects on sensitive habitat.
The renewable energy developers gave examples of numerous projects that had been blocked by the permitting slowdown. One planned wind farm in Illinois had been delayed indefinitely while waiting for wildlife and water permits, the filings said. The project lost its spot in line to connect to the electrical grid after its developer had already invested $10 million.
The Interior Department had also barred wind and solar developers from using a taxpayer-funded database known as IPaC, which they needed to document the effects that projects might have on wildlife, even though that data was often required for projects to get federal permits.
In her ruling, Judge Casper said that wind and solar developers were likely to suffer “irreparable harm” if the restrictions on renewable energy remained in place. She ordered the Interior Department to stop implementing the July memo that had required all permitting actions to undergo extra layers of review from Mr. Burgum’s office.
She also blocked implementation of a policy that required the Army Corps of Engineers to consider the “energy density” of a power plant when issuing approvals, an action expected to favor fossil fuels. And the judge blocked the ban on access to the IPaC database.
Renewable energy developers had said that the Trump administration’s restrictions on wind and solar power violated the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs executive branch rule-making, in part because they were not sufficiently justified. Judge Casper suggested that the developers were likely to prevail on those points. She noted, for example, that the July Interior memo was a “significant departure” from precedent that would require “more detailed justification” than had been provided.
The ruling does not address all of the Trump administration’s moves to restrict renewable energy. For instance, many proposed wind farms have been stalled because the Defense Department has stopped finalizing agreements designed to address the risk that turbines interfere with radar, developers have said. That issue was not part of this lawsuit.
Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.
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