This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Texas state officials have led a successful and concerted effort to prevent offshore wind developments in the Gulf. Over the last few years, key leaders whose signatures and support are required to permit energy developments off the coast signaled to investors that such approvals would be unlikely.

So even as five offshore wind projects resume construction this month after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s stop-work order for the developments, Texas has none in the mix. The US has a small number of projects operating off the East Coast, totaling some 40 gigawatts.

Texas leads the nation in wind energy, producing more than a fifth of the country’s wind-sourced electricity. Studies show the region could have similar success offshore, especially given the state’s experience building oil and gas rigs in the Gulf. Yet an auction of federal seabed leases nearly three years ago saw no bids.

While there are a myriad of reasons no offshore wind projects are operational or underway off the coast of Texas, experts say chief among them is the political hostility from state leaders, and, more recently, the federal government, toward this type of renewable energy.

In August 2023, three federal leases were put up for bid for the first time in the Gulf of Mexico by the Biden administration to build wind farms.

President Joe Biden had set a goal to produce 30 gigawatts, which the administration said could power 10 million homes and avoid 78 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. One of the federal land sites was off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The other two were off the Texas coast, some 30 nautical miles from Galveston.

The massive blades of coastal turbines allow them to generate three times as much power as a land turbines.

Both renewable energy developers and oil and gas companies, like Shell and TotalEnergies, qualified as bidders for the Texas sites.

The leaseholder would have been eligible to generate power to sell to Texas’ electric grid or to produce hydrogen power. The Louisiana lease sold for $5.6 million, but no company bid on either of the Texas spots.

Despite the mature workforce with the know-how to build offshore facilities in the Gulf, Colin Leyden, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Texas director, said there weren’t high expectations that the Texas leases would be the first to go. It was clear that offshore wind had a few high-profile antagonists, he said.

Any offshore substations or cable landing facilities onshore from sea wind developments would need approval from the state’s coastal lands and seabeds regulator, General Land Office Commissioner Dawn Buckingham. Ahead of the lease sale, Buckingham said her office wouldn’t grant the necessary approvals for an offshore wind farm to commence construction.

The General Land Office did not respond to questions from Inside Climate News.

It signaled to investors that Texas was a risky place to invest, said Stacy Ortego, the Gulf of Mexico offshore wind energy campaign manager for the National Wildlife Federation.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, state leadership welcomed the investment. Louisiana’s previous governor, John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, put together a climate initiative task force that recommended 5 gigawatts of offshore wind power generation by 2035.

“That was a strong indicator that Louisiana was open for business for offshore wind,” Ortego said. “Whereas Texas was sending the opposite........

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