‘Why take those jobs away?’: the unionized workers decrying Trump’s war on wind
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Trump administration has completed four wind lease buyout deals totaling more than $2.6bn, including $765m to Invenergy for four projects in California, New York, and Maine, and roughly $900m to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore leases.
- Thomas Kilday, an IBEW Local 99 furnace electrician, was mid-shift aboard a vessel on the Revolution Wind Project when the administration issued a stop-work order in August last year, with a second 90-day order hitting over Christmas — both blocked by federal judges.
- Revolution Wind began delivering power to New England in March, citing work by more than 1,000 local union workers, and is expected to power over 350,000 homes and businesses at over 90% completion.
- Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, said labor is "five for five" beating the Trump administration in court on stop-work orders for Rhode Island-area wind projects, calling the lease buyouts "throwing money away for the sake of their ideology."
- Will Gonzalez of Laborers' Local 385, who worked on the now-operational Vinyard Wind 1, called the opposition a "personal vendetta" stemming from Trump's fight against a turbine near his Scotland golf course — an appeal he lost in December 2015.
- Department of Interior spokesperson denied any job impact, saying "No jobs were eliminated because none of these leases were operational or supporting employment," and did not address Trump's prior animus toward wind projects tied to his golf courses.
Why it matters: Trump's Interior Department has spent $2.6bn canceling wind leases rather than letting them produce jobs — a policy the Rhode Island AFL-CIO's Pat Crowley calls "throwing money away for ideology." With labor winning five straight court challenges and Revolution Wind already powering 350,000 homes, the buyout path is the administration's only remaining lever against an industry the courts keep refusing to freeze.
