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In a Baltimore courtroom, US Wind fights for its life against the Trump administration

December 11, 2025 — Offshore wind company US Wind battled the Trump administration in a Baltimore courtroom Wednesday, defending its Maryland project against the government’s plans to revoke and reconsider a construction permit issued under President Joe Biden (D).

For US Wind, the threat is existential, attorneys said Wednesday. Not only would the government’s revocation of the permit threaten to upend the project along Ocean City’s coast, it also could send the entire company heading toward bankruptcy.

“We’re not there yet,” US Wind CEO Jeff Grybowski said Tuesday outside the U.S. District Courthouse. “We’re in this fight because we made a promise to Maryland that we’re going to build the biggest renewable energy project in the state’s history.”

US Wind’s project is the closest to development along the Delmarva coast. Other companies — Ørsted and Equinor — have leases offshore, but do not have approved construction plans, like US Wind. But having an approved permit did not stop the Trump administration from trying to stop the project — one of a number of offshore wind projects that have been targeted, including some where stop-work orders have stalled construction.

Wednesday’s hearing is the latest twist in a case that began with the parties in entirely different roles. It began in October 2024, when Ocean City challenged the Biden administration’s approval of the permit, called a Construction and Operations Plan, or COP.

The Interior Department initially defended its issuance of the permit. But it reversed course after President Donald Trump (R) took office this year, and in September it asked U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher to remand the permit back to the agency for reconsideration, saying it was not properly evaluated under Biden.

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

Federal judge throws out Trump order blocking development of wind energy

December 10, 2025 — A federal judge on Monday struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking wind energy projects, saying the effort to halt virtually all leasing of wind farms on federal lands and waters was “arbitrary and capricious” and violates U.S. law.

Judge Patti Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order blocking wind energy projects and declared it unlawful.

Saris ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, that challenged Trump’s Day One order that paused leasing and permitting for wind energy projects.

Trump has been hostile to renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, and prioritizes fossil fuels to produce electricity.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell hailed the ruling as a victory for green jobs and renewable energy.

Read the full article at ABC News

US judge rejects Trump administration’s halt of wind energy permits

December 10, 2025 — A federal judge on Monday struck down an order by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to halt all federal approvals for new wind energy projects, saying that agencies’ efforts to implement his directive were unlawful and arbitrary.

Agencies including the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency have been implementing a directive to halt all new approvals needed for both onshore and offshore wind projects pending a review of leasing and permitting practices.

Siding with, a group of 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston said those agencies had failed to provide reasoned explanations for the actions they took to carry out the directive Trump issued on his first day back in office on January 20.

They could not lawfully under the Administrative Procedure Act indefinitely decline to review applications for permits, added Saris, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose state led the legal challenge, called the ruling “a big victory in our fight to keep tackling the climate crisis” in a social media post.

Read the full article at Reuters

Federal judge declares Trump wind memo unlawful

December 9, 2025 — ​​A federal judge on Monday ruled in favor of Massachusetts and more than a dozen states that sued the Trump administration in May over President Donald Trump’s day-one offshore wind memo. The directive has frozen permitting since January, pending a comprehensive review by federal agencies.

The states argued the memo is unlawful and has caused significant harm – stymieing domestic investment, jeopardizing states’ abilities to supply enough electricity, and creating an “existential threat” to the industry.

Judge Patti B. Saris seemed to agree with their legal claims: “The State Plaintiffs have produced ample evidence demonstrating that they face ongoing or imminent injuries due to the Wind Order.”

On the flip side, she delivered sharp criticism of the federal government’s arguments and the wind memo itself, writing that it fails to adequately explain or support such a significant change in course from the agencies’ prior permitting practices.

“Whatever level of explanation is required when deviating from longstanding agency practice, this is not it,” Judge Saris wrote.

“The Court concludes that the Wind Order constitutes a final agency action that is arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law,” she wrote. “Accordingly, the Court allows Plaintiffs’ motions… denies the Agency Defendants’ motion…, and declares unlawful and vacates the Wind Order” in its entirety.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell in a statement Monday called the ruling a “critical victory.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Study suggests wind power development would have little impact on Gulf shrimping

December 5, 2025 — A study from the University of Miami found that the installation of wind power infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, currently referred to as the Gulf of America by the U.S. government, is unlikely to impact commercial shrimping operations.

The development of offshore wind projects in the United States has been contentious for much of the commercial fishing industry, with fishers claiming turbines in the ocean block them from accessing valued fishing grounds and disrupt the ecosystem. Wind turbines have also posed a problem for NOAA Fisheries, forcing the agency to reconsider how it conducts fisheries surveys as its traditional research vessels can’t navigate too close to the structures.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSETTS: Seventeen months on, Vineyard Wind blade break investigation isn’t done

December 4, 2025 — Sixty-two towers. Sixty-two nacelles. One-hundred eighty-six blades.

Those are the pieces that comprise Vineyard Wind, an 800-megawatt offshore wind project nearing completion after more than two years of construction.

By The Light’s accounting, the project has two towers and two nacelles left to ship out from the Port of New Bedford. That leaves the blades — an estimated 33 of which, as of last month, have yet to top some turbines, and an unknown number that may still need to be removed and replaced.

As batches of blades have traveled across the seas, to and from New Bedford, France, and Nova Scotia, and been installed on turbines, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has continued to investigate what caused one of the blades to fail in July 2024.

In January 2025, the Biden administration ordered Vineyard Wind to remove all blades manufactured at a factory in Gaspé, Quebec, where the broken blade was built. BSEE gave Vineyard Wind permission to finish construction using blades from a different factory in Cherbourg, France.

Read the full article at the The New Bedford Light

Trump administration moves to revoke key permit from another offshore wind project proposed near Mass.

December 4, 2025 — More than a year after the Biden administration issued the final permit for a pair of proposed offshore wind projects near Massachusetts, the Trump administration is trying to take it back.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to “remand,” or reconsider, its approval of the construction and operations plan for the projects, New England Wind 1 and 2. The plan is the last major permit an offshore wind project needs to begin construction.

The motion is the latest move by the Trump administration to target the offshore wind industry in the U.S., and it comes just a few weeks after a federal judge in a different, but similar, case ruled that the government could take a second look at the construction and operations plan it approved for SouthCoast Wind, a proposed wind project also near Massachusetts.

The federal government’s motion to reconsider New England Wind’s permit says its prior approval “may have” failed to account for all of the project’s impacts. The filing cited a relatively new interpretation of the federal law known as the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that changes the criteria to evaluate offshore wind projects.

“Agencies have inherent authority to reconsider past decisions and to revise or replace them,” the government’s lawyers wrote.

But Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, said this is not how the permitting process is supposed to work.

Read the full article at wbur

BOEM to consider revoking New England Wind 1 approval

December 3, 2025 — The federal agency regulating offshore wind development asked a federal judge on Tuesday to allow it to reconsider a key approval — one the same agency granted just last year — for New England Wind 1, a project planned off the Massachusetts coast.

If the federal government’s request is granted, it would be a blow to the project, which plans to invest in New Bedford and use the city for long-term project operations. If the approval stands, the project could move toward construction once it secures a power purchase agreement with the commonwealth.

This is at least the third time the administration has sought a remand of an offshore wind project approval, the others being for SouthCoast Wind and Maryland’s US Wind. The permits give major infrastructure projects the certainty to secure financing and move forward with construction.

The filing comes more than two months after the federal government signaled it would take such action against this project. The remand request was expected sooner, but the weekslong government shutdown pushed the deadline.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed the motion as part of a lawsuit brought in May by offshore wind opposition group ACK for Whales and other parties, including the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, against BOEM and the Interior Department’s approval of New England Wind 1.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Delaware judge pauses US Wind appeal in wake of new law

December 3, 2025 — A compromise struck in June between Delaware lawmakers is now poised to end litigation challenging a Sussex County decision to block a controversial wind farm planned just off its shores.

The development follows a complex series of events that began a year ago when Sussex County decided to not approve a plan for a land-based substation that the 121-turbine wind farm needed to operate.

Not only did the wind farm developer – US Wind – appeal the decision to a Delaware court, but its Democratic supporters in the state legislature later introduced legislation to override and reverse the Sussex County substation denial.

The legislation led to a late-night standoff during the final hours of the legislative session that had Republicans threatening to block passage of Delaware’s capital budget. Ultimately, they  relented after Democrats agreed to postpone its effective date until early 2026.

On Monday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Mark Conner decided to pause the appeal in advance of the January effective date for the new law.

Conner explicitly pointed to the new law when ordering the pause.

Read the full article at Spotlight Delaware