September 12, 2025 — The future is uncertain for SouthCoast Wind, a planned wind farm south of the islands that would serve Rhode Island and Massachusetts via power cables routed under the Sakonnet River to Brayton Point in Fall River.
Earlier this month, officials from the United States Department of the Interior issued a filing in a Washington, DC court noting that agency officials intend “to reconsider” approval of the project. The news comes just weeks after the Trump Administration ordered work halted on Revolution Wind, another farm off the coast of Rhode Island that was 80 percent built out when work was ordered to stop.
The Sept. 2 filing was associated with a civil suit brought by Nantucket against Southcoast Wind, the federal Department of the Interior and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). Filings also note that Interior officials seek a “voluntary remand” of previous federal approvals by this coming Thursday, Sept. 18.
Southcoast Wind, a 2.4-gigawatt farm that company officials said would power more than 800,000 homes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is currently under review by the BOEM following the Biden administration’s approval late last year of 127,000-acre ocean lease area about 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 23 miles south of Nantucket.
The plan has always been to connect electric cables from the site through federal and state waters, including the Sakonnet River, and eventually to an electrical substation at Brayton Point in Somerset, where it would link to the regional electric grid.