President Donald Trump's administration has increasingly used regulatory delays to impede the growth of renewable energy projects, while giving fossil fuel companies years of additional time to comply with existing regulations.
The delay tactics have proven to be a potent tool for the administration assault on what Trump calls the "Green New Scam", in some cases without having to complete time-consuming rulemakings that take months to finalize. And even when delays have failed to hold up in court, such as a judge's ruling in September lifting a "stop work" order against a $4bn offshore wind project called Revolution Wind, the administration has been able to effectively revive the order months later by citing "classified" national security concerns.
Trump began freezing regulations issued under former president Joe Biden hours into his second term on 20 January 2025, and he has ramped up delays in recent months. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December delayed methane restrictions for oil and gas producers by 18 months and gave coal-fired power plants an extra five years to meet new wastewater standards. The US Interior Department recently issued guidance and directives providing one-year compliance delays for flaring rules and increased minimum bonds to cover decommissioning costs.
The Interior Department throughout 2025 repeatedly targeted offshore wind projects that were under construction with "stop work" orders, some of which were later reversed by courts or rescinded in response to concessions related to pipelines.
US interior secretary Doug Burgum subsequently issued an across-the-board pause on all five major offshore wind projects last week, citing national security. And in July, Burgum began requiring his personal approval for 69 different categories of reviews for wind and solar, with delays trickling down even for projects located on private land.
"We now really have a question about whether American companies can go to a private piece of property and build something," American Clean Power Association chief executive Jason Grumet said in October.
The delay tactics have echoes of a strategy deployed under former president Joe Biden, who imposed a year-long "pause" on issuing new LNG export licenses and repeatedly held up federal oil and gas lease sales. Oil and gas officials say they want permitting to be more durable for all types of energy resources but noted a lack of outcry from the renewable energy sector in the four years when Biden was delaying fossil fuel projects.
"I didn't see a lot of clean energy lobbyists out there saying that, you know, we should get the Keystone XL pipeline built, or the Constitution pipeline built, or the Mountain Valley pipeline built," American Petroleum Institute chief executive Mike Sommers said on a podcast hosted by POLITICO in September.
Democrats are hoping to extract a political price against Trump for delaying renewable energy. They say the administration's blockade against many wind and solar projects are partly to blame for rising electrical bills. Last week, Senate Democrats threatened to abandon bipartisan negotiations on permitting legislation in retaliation for Burgum's directive blocking construction on offshore wind development.
"The illegal attacks on fully permitted renewable energy projects must be reversed if there is to be any chance that permitting talks resume," US senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) said on 22 December.
The Trump administration plans to continue delays in coming months. EPA plans to propose in "early 2026" a two-year delay of Biden-era air pollution restrictions for cars and trucks sold starting in model year 2027, EPA's top air official Aaron Szabo wrote in an opinion piece published on 19 December in The Hill. The Biden-era vehicle rule was "infeasible" and "unrealistic", Szabo said.
