A federal judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing a series of permitting policies that wind and solar energy industry groups say have stymied the development of new energy generation projects.
Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston issued a preliminary injunction sought by nine advocacy groups and industry trade associations that argued the administration had imposed unlawful roadblocks that have halted the development of wind and solar energy projects nationwide.
The ruling was the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to the Trump administration’s efforts to block federal approvals for wind energy projects or stop work on multi-billion-dollar offshore wind farms under construction on the East Coast.
Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels and maximize their output in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, after campaigning for the presidency on the refrain of “drill, baby, drill.”
Groups including RENEW Northeast and Alliance for Clean Energy New York sued in December, seeking to block actions by the U.S. Department of the Interior and other agencies that they said placed wind and solar technologies into what their lawyer called “regulatory second-class status.”
