A federal court ruling could secure wind energy’s future in New York and nationwide.
A Boston judge ruled the Trump administration’s nearly year-long ban on permitting for wind farms was illegal. This allows New York and other states to develop clean-energy projects, proponents say, which will benefit energy independence.
Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, said wind energy can do a lot to help the state.
“Wind energy is often the most powerful at night, and in the winter when solar is the weakest, so solar and wind actually work together to provide a balanced renewable-energy portfolio,” she said. “There’s a lot of jobs in developing, building and operating these projects, and they generate a lot of tax revenues for the host communities.”
This comes as New York’s Power Authority approved a plan to double its goal for solar, wind and energy storage projects. The hope is that new investments will kickstart clean power in the state as private markets continue to rely on fossil fuels.
While the state has ambitious wind and clean-energy goals, reports show it’s lagging and could miss the targets established in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Aside from federal challenges, Wells said state-level regulatory challenges held back clean energy from getting up and running.
“The actual process of connecting to the grid was a very jumbled mess of a process because it had never been designed for the number of projects we had started seeing,” she said, “so that process got completely redesigned in the past couple of years and is now working pretty well.”
This was partly done by passing the RAPID Act in 2024 to speed up clean-energy permitting and interconnection. Wells added that the state still has to amend the process for buying renewable energy.”
FingerLakes1.com is the region’s leading all-digital news publication. The company was founded in 1998 and has been keeping residents informed for more than two decades. Have a lead? Send it to news@fingerlakes1.com.
