August 27, 2025 — The Trump administration announced in a legal filing last week that it intends to revoke construction approvals for a controversial planned wind farm off the Delaware-Maryland coast within the next three weeks.
The move comes after the administration has spent months opposing offshore wind power, and more recently honing that opposition against Baltimore-based US Wind’s Delmarva project.
August 27, 2025 — The efforts to derail the U.S. offshore wind energy business are continuing with the Department of Justice confirming the Trump administration’s intent to withdraw previously issued approvals for Maryland’s first offshore wind farm to be developed by US Wind. Justice informed district courts in Delaware and Maryland of its intended action following an earlier jurisdictional dispute between Maryland and the federal Environmental Protection Agency that also sought to challenge the process for the Maryland project.
The TV news channel in Maryland, WBOC, reported on Friday, August 22, that the Department of Justice had moved to stay a pending lawsuit in Delaware in which a homeowner is challenging the wind farm’s permits under the Clean Water Act. The reasoning the DOJ gave was its intent to withdraw approval for the wind farm, making the court case irrelevant and a waste of time.
DOJ on Monday, August 25, WBOC reports, filed additional details in the District Court of Maryland. There it told the court that the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy (BOEM) intends to “voluntarily remand and vacate its approval of the Construction and Operations Plan” for US Wind’s Maryland windfarm project. DOJ revealed the action would come by September 12.
August 27, 2025 — While Gov. Dan McKee and state elected leaders have roundly criticized the Trump administration’s order to stop work on Revolution Wind, members of the Rhode Island fishing industry are applauding the decision to halt construction of the 65-turbine offshore wind farm.
A handful of industry representatives gathered Tuesday, Aug. 26 on the Galilee waterfront to thank the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for the stop-work order, and to urge the administration to take similar action against other offshore wind projects proposed or being built in Atlantic Ocean waters in the region.
“I have one thing to say to the U.S. government,” said Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for North Kingstown-based seafood distributor Seafreeze. “Save our fishing grounds from offshore wind. All of them. You’ve started with Revolution Wind, and for that we are grateful. Now, go down the list because it’s long, and you are our only chance.”
August 27, 2025 — After the Trump administration has ordered a halt to construction of a nearly complete $4 billion offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut, it’s reasonable to wonder whether Dominion Energy’s $10.9 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach could be in similar peril.
On Aug. 22, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management stopped Orsted’s Revolution Wind project, which already has 45 of 65 turbines installed, along with all underwater foundations. Citing a January memorandum by President Donald Trump, BOEM told Orsted North America to “halt all ongoing activities related to the Revolution Wind Project” while the federal government reviews potential national security concerns.
August 26, 2025 — When the Trump administration ordered that construction stop last week at Revolution Wind, a giant wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that was nearly finished, it alluded vaguely to national security concerns but did not offer any further explanation.
It’s becoming a striking pattern.
The order was the third time the Trump administration had revoked permits or halted work on wind farms that had already received federal approval while offering little legal justification for doing so, following actions against wind projects in New York and Idaho. Legal experts say that there is little basis for blocking projects that have already received permits.
The Trump administration has signaled in a court filing that it next plans to rescind federal approvals for yet another wind farm, the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, which had not yet begun construction but would consist of up to 114 wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City, Md. The filing was first reported by WBOC.
August 26, 2025 — The Trump administration intends to withdraw federal approval for US Wind’s wind farm off the coast of Maryland, according to a document filed in federal court on Friday.
In the filing, in U.S. District Court in Delaware, attorneys from the Department of Justice asked the court to stay a lawsuit by a Delaware homeowner challenging the Interior Department’s approval last year of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project.
The action is the latest in a series of moves the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has made to stymie development of offshore wind and other clean energy facilities.
The Biden administration approved the US Wind project in September of last year. It was expected to one day produce enough power for 718,000 homes.
The Trump administration, by September 12, will move in a separate lawsuit brought by officials in Ocean City, Maryland to vacate approval of the facility’s construction and operations plan, the filing said. That lawsuit is pending in federal court in Maryland.
Read the full article at Reuters
August 26, 2025 — A nearly complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut faces an uncertain future as the states’ Democratic governors, members of Congress and union workers are calling Monday for the Trump administration to let construction resume.
The administration halted construction on the Revolution Wind project last week, saying the federal government needs to review the project and address national security concerns. It did not specify what those concerns are. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said Monday it’s not commenting further at this time.
August 26, 2025 — Wind turbine pieces stood hundreds of feet tall above dozens of trade workers and Connecticut officials Monday, as they spoke out against the Trump administration’s sudden pause of Revolution Wind, an offshore wind farm project. It was poised to soon provide electricity to at least 350,000 homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
“This is a project that our grid operator was counting on to turn on at the end of next year,” Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said from the State Pier in New London.
August 26, 2025 — A charter boat fisherman was among the first to discover the wreckage — a “mess,” he called it, deep off the coast of Massachusetts. From behind a veil of pea soup-thick fog emerged hundreds of white and green fiberglass and Styrofoam pieces, some as small as a fingernail, some as large as a truck hood. By the following morning, the tide had carried the debris about 12 nautical miles and scattered it across Nantucket Island’s beaches. Residents woke to a shoreline covered in trash, fiberglass shards mixed in with seaweed and shells, waves thrusting flotsam onto the sand.
It did not take long to follow the breadcrumb trail to its source: Vineyard Wind, an offshore wind farm located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. On Saturday, July 13th, 2024, a nearly 115,000-pound blade broke from one of the turbines, shattered, and littered at least six truckloads’ worth of waste into the ocean.
The stakes for renewable energy advocates could not have been higher. Scientists, environmental groups, offshore wind developers, investors, and stakeholders from across the world had all been closely monitoring Vineyard Wind, which, with a planned 62 turbines, was on track to be the first large-scale commercial offshore wind farm in the United States. Dozens of other projects with contracts pending construction had hoped to glean insight from Vineyard Wind as a leading example. A disaster like this would put the nascent offshore wind industry under intense scrutiny and had the potential to throw future projects into jeopardy.
August 25, 2025 — The Trump administration halted construction on a nearly complete offshore wind project near Rhode Island as the White House continues to attack the battered U.S. offshore wind industry that scientists say is crucial to the urgent fight against climate change.
Danish wind farm developer Orsted says the Revolution Wind project is about 80% complete, with 45 out of its 65 turbines already installed.
Despite that progress — and the fact that the project had cleared years of federal and state reviews — the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued the order Friday, saying the federal government needs to review the project and “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.”
It did not specify what the national security concerns are.
President Donald Trump has made sweeping strides to prioritize fossil fuels and hinder renewable energy projects. Trump recently called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or “farmer destroying Solar” projects. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” he wrote on his Truth Social site this week.