It took more than 20 years, but the largest renewable energy project in the history of the United States has recently begun generating electricity. The commissioning of the SunZia wind farm in the state of New Mexico, however, was not celebrated with fanfare but occurred quietly. Whether this is because the White House is occupied by President Donald Trump, a declared opponent of wind power, remains unclear.
Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has steadily rolled back federal support for wind power. New requirements for the approval of wind facilities were issued, and existing tax incentives were eliminated. The industry is therefore trying to avoid big headlines.
It is perhaps a sign of the times that neither the owners of the wind farm nor the California grid operator to which the electricity from the wind turbines flows publicly announced the start of electricity production. The GridStatus grid analysis portal reported the start of production first. The portal’s analysts were surprised how the California grid operator CAISO managed last week to surpass its previous wind power record by almost 500 megawatts. “The sharp rise suggests that SunZia is in operation,” explained Abby Lestina, an analyst at GridStatus.
The SunZia wind park is reportedly currently in the testing phase. The exact commercial start of the total of 916 turbines is not known; the news portal E&E News, however, reports that this is expected within this quarter.
The wind park has a capacity of 3.5 gigawatts and could thus generate power for more than 1 million households. Although the wind park is located in New Mexico, an almost 900-kilometer-long high-voltage line ensures that the power reaches customers in California and Arizona.
Twenty years and ten billion dollars
The project was originally proposed as early as 2006. Bureaucratic hurdles and several lawsuits have repeatedly delayed the 10-billion-dollar project. “Twenty years of planning and endless litigation do not, in the end, make for a particularly gripping story, but it should not require decades and millions of dollars in legal costs — as in the SunZia case — to feed large amounts of clean energy into the grid,” explained Phil Aroneau, a former strategic adviser at the U.S. Department of Energy, in a post.
Aroneau, who now works with Climate United, a New York-based investment fund for renewable energy projects, added that the current geopolitical situation could further advance the expansion of solar or wind power.
“Given rising energy costs, an inflation that is moving in the wrong direction, and families and businesses under increasing pressure, even the government’s grandiose wind power rhetoric seems to have cooled somewhat,” he said.
SunZia, at 3.5 gigawatts, is more than three times larger than the previous holder of the record in the United States. A similarly large wind project is planned for Wyoming. This project is expected to be completed before the end of the decade and will also benefit California’s grid customers.
Moratorium Creates Uncertainty
An moratorium on planned and already under construction wind projects issued by the Trump administration caused great uncertainty in the industry last year. Yet the administration’s resistance seems to have faded somewhat. Just last week, the Department of Justice refrained from appealing a ruling in favor of several wind projects.
Despite President Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” agenda, which aims primarily to promote the extraction of fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, the United States significantly increased its capacity in renewable energy last year. Nearly 88 percent of all new production capacity last year came from solar or wind energy
This year, the trend is also expected to continue; the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that more than two-thirds of all new capacity will come from clean energy.
