Speaking on CNBC, President Donald Trump‘s Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum echoed the President’s repeated criticism of the wind energy industry, which Trump has vowed to defund, halting a major wind project off Rhode Island’s coastline and threatening others with closure.
[Note: In August alone, the Trump administration cancelled $679 million in federal funding for offshore wind projects, and the President announced, “We don’t allow windmills. We’re not allowing any windmills to go up…They’re ruining our country. They’re ruining everyone.” Instead, Trump is promoting an increase in the production of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which he said is “very much in vogue now.”]
Burgum told the news outlet: “There was just a report out — all of these European wind companies, they’ve had a wind drought. People accept the fact that now some years it rains more than it does others. Some years it blows, the wind blows more than it does than others…All of those European countries are reporting earnings below expectations because the wind didn’t blow as hard this summer as they expected it to do.”
Burgum: "There was just a report out — all of these European wind companies, they've had a wind drought … All of those European companies are reporting earnings below expectations because the wind didn't blow as hard this summer as they expected it to do." pic.twitter.com/86Cn54UJqj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 29, 2025
Burgum’s position is in contrast with the U.S. Department of Energy’s assessment of wind power’s value, as the DOE claims on its official site that “not only is wind an abundant and inexhaustible resource, but it also provides electricity without burning any fuel or polluting the air.”
Among the other advantages cited by the Energy Department are “good–paying jobs with nearly 150,000 people working in the U.S. wind industry across all 50 states.”
The DOE does offer some support for wind’s variability argument, allowing that “wind projects may not be cost-competitive in some locations that are not windy enough” while also asserting that “when comparing the cost of energy associated with new power plants, wind and solar projects are now more economically competitive than gas, geothermal, coal, or nuclear facilities.”
Burgum’s comments about the wind industry are being slammed by many in the comments, where he stands accused of cherry-picking data to support the administration’s policy preferences — and of altering his views to fit the preferred narrative of the President.
Once again, they lie about things that are so easily verifiable.https://t.co/rRPyynVXEz https://t.co/XQT4IjIPSE
— 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐢 (@ChidiNwatu) September 29, 2025
Notably, as Governor of North Dakota prior to becoming Trump’s Interior Secretary, Burgum bragged about his state’s wind energy.
In his September 2024 proclamation, Burgum wrote: “Wind power provided about one-third of North Dakota’s net generation in 2022, ranking among the top six states with the largest share of electricity generated by wind.”
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