Interior Secretary Burgum Vows to Appeal Court Ruling Blocking Renewable Energy Permitting Freeze

The Trump administration remains steadfast in its opposition to policies that disadvantage wind and solar projects, despite a recent legal setback. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum testified before Congress on Wednesday, confirming that his agency will appeal a district court ruling that blocked it from enforcing these policies.

“We reject the whole premise,” Burgum stated during a hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Since President Trump took office, the U.S. Department of the Interior has implemented a series of memos and orders designed to systematically hinder wind and solar development. In July 2023, the agency issued a memo requiring nearly all approvals in the wind and solar permitting process to undergo additional reviews by the secretary’s office. A subsequent order prioritized permitting for projects with higher energy density—those producing more power per acre—while labeling wind and solar as “highly inefficient” compared to coal, nuclear, and natural gas projects.

These policies effectively froze wind and solar development on public lands and stalled projects on private lands that require federal consultations, impacting hundreds of clean energy initiatives. By the end of 2023, Democrats in Congress concluded that negotiating on permitting reform was futile if the executive branch could unilaterally impose its own rules. They insisted on limits to executive authority before agreeing to any deal.

In response, a coalition of clean energy organizations, including the Clean Grid Alliance, Alliance for Clean Energy New York, and the Southern Renewable Energy Association, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit argued that the Interior Department’s policies “place wind and solar technologies into second-class status without providing any rational justification for such disparate treatment or drastic policy shifts—unlawfully picking winners and losers among energy sources, contrary to Congress’ intent.” The groups also claimed the policies violated the Administrative Procedures Act as arbitrary and capricious.

In April 2024, Judge Denise Casper ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, issuing a temporary injunction against the agency’s wind and solar-hindering memos.

Congressional Testimony and Legal Challenges

During Wednesday’s hearing, Representative Susie Lee (D-NV) criticized Burgum’s policies, stating they had “created a total permitting mess” in her home state of Nevada. She pressed him on the immediate impact of the court’s order within his agency. When Burgum dismissed the judge’s decision, Lee directly asked if he planned to appeal the ruling.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Burgum responded, asserting that “the idea that a single judge could decide” how the agency conducts permitting “is absurd.”

Lee emphasized that the July 15, 2023 memo was the primary obstacle to a permitting reform agreement in Congress. “If you would just rescind that memo, we could get permitting reform passed this Congress, and we can start to talk about permitting all forms of energy,” she argued.

Later in the hearing, Representative Dave Min (D-CA) questioned Burgum about another controversial administration action: a deal to pay the French energy company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its offshore wind leases. Burgum’s response to this line of questioning was not fully detailed in the available transcript.