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The Department of Interior abruptly paused the leases for five of the nation’s largest proposed off-shore wind projects on Monday. That effectively halts all ongoing off-shore wind development in the United States.

The moves come as electricity demand in the U.S. is growing for the first time in years, driven in large part by the data centers needed to fuel the artificial intelligence boom. The Biden administration issued the leases to help meet that demand and as part of its goal of shifting the country away from fossil fuels, toward more renewable energy sources.

“This so-called ‘pause’ on offshore wind makes no sense and is an escalation of the Administration’s ongoing, baseless attacks on clean energy,” Pasha Feinberg, offshore wind strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, said in a statement. “In its ongoing effort to prop up waning fossil fuels interests the Administration is taking wilder and wilder........

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