A firm that cut millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trump's plan for a massive new ballroom wing of the White House has suddenly found one of its flagship energy projects canceled by the Bureau of Land Management with no explanation.
According to The New York Times, "The project, known as Esmeralda 7, would have comprised a sprawling network of solar panels and batteries across 118,000 acres of federally owned land in the Nevada desert northwest of Las Vegas. It was expected to produce up to 6.2 gigawatts of energy, enough to power nearly two million homes." It would have been one of the largest solar installations anywhere in the world.
A developer leading the project was NextEra Energy, one of the biggest utility firms in the United States.
"NextEra was among the companies that donated at least $5 million to fund the construction of Mr. Trump’s $200 million ballroom in the East Wing of the White House, CBS News reported."
Trump's ballroom project, which the administration says is financed entirely by private donations, has drawn massive criticism, as the planned expansion would be larger than the entire square footage of the current White House.
The exact reason for Esmeralda 7 being canceled is unclear. However, the report noted, "The Interior Department is now requiring dozens of formerly routine approvals for wind and solar projects to undergo new layers of political review by the interior secretary’s office, a policy that is causing significant permitting delays. The agency is also opening investigations into bird deaths caused by wind farms and withdrawing millions of acres of federal waters previously available for leasing by offshore wind companies."
This decision comes despite the fact that Nevada's Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, has raised alarms with the administration that energy permitting isn't going fast enough to keep pace with his state's power demands for mining and AI data centers.
Trump has repeatedly attacked solar and wind power projects, and has reportedly hated green energy development ever since a wind farm altered the view from one of his golf courses in Scotland.
In another recent controversial move, the Trump administration moved to pull approval from an 80 percent complete offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut, but a federal judge stepped in and allowed work to resume.
