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Orsted’s Revolution Wind sues Trump administration over project halt

September 5, 2025 — Danish offshore wind developer Orsted (ORSTED.CO), and the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut sued the Trump administration on Thursday, alleging its decision to block construction of the nearly finished Revolution Wind project is illegal.

The separate complaints are the latest twist in a saga that started last month when U.S. officials issued a stop-work order to Revolution Wind, citing unspecified national security concerns. The order forced the suspension of a project that was 80% complete with all offshore foundations in place and 45 out of 65 wind turbines installed.

“The stop-work order was issued without statutory authority, lacks any evidentiary basis, and is unlawful,” Revolution Wind said in its complaint against U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and five other federal defendants. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized wind energy as ugly, unreliable, and expensive, and his administration is leaning on multiple federal agencies to rein in wind development.

Critics say Trump’s stance on offshore wind is at odds with his goal to boost energy supplies to power the nation’s ambitions around artificial intelligence, which requires a huge amount of data processing.

Read the full article at Reuters

Orsted Sues Trump Administration in Fight to Restart Its Blocked Wind Farm

September 5, 2025 — Orsted, the Danish renewable energy giant, sued the Trump administration on Thursday, saying the government’s move to halt a nearly finished wind farm off Rhode Island was unlawful and “issued in bad faith.”

The administration last month took the remarkable step of ordering work to stop on Revolution Wind, a $6.2 billion offshore wind farm that was nearly 80 percent complete, as part of a campaign to block wind projects. In a letter to Orsted, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management alluded to national security concerns with the project but did not elaborate.

On Thursday, Revolution Wind LLC, a joint venture between Orsted and Skyborn Renewables, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the administration from enforcing the stop-work order. The complaint alleges that the order was arbitrary and capricious in part because it appeared to be carried out under political pressure from the White House.

The attorneys general of Connecticut and Rhode Island also said that they would file a separate lawsuit Thursday in the United States District Court for Rhode Island to overturn the stop-work order.

Read the full article at The New York Times

US Wind asks federal court to deny Trump’s pending permit approval reversal

September 5, 2025 — Offshore wind developer US Wind has filed a cross claim against the Trump Administration in an ongoing legal battle over US Wind’s proposed project off the shores of Delmarva, according to court documents obtained by WBOC.

Filed on Sept. 3, US Wind’s cross claim against the federal government alleges the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service are illegally seeking to vacate the Biden Administration’s previously approved permits that greenlit the US Wind offshore project.

As WBOC first reported, the Trump administration notified the US District Court in Delaware of its intention to withdraw federal approval of the permits on Aug. 22. Both the federal government and US Wind are listed as defendants in an ongoing lawsuit brought against them by Ocean City leaders, residents, businesses, and numerous other parties in an attempt to stop the offshore project. Because of their intent to reverse approval, the Trump Administration argues the lawsuit is about to be rendered moot.

Read the full article at WBOC

US plans to revoke approval of another Massachusetts offshore wind farm

September 4, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s administration plans to revoke federal approval of Avangrid’s planned New England Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, according to a court filing on Wednesday.

The legal maneuver is the latest move by U.S. authorities to stymie development of offshore wind energy, which Trump has called ugly, expensive, and unreliable. Last week, the administration also said it was reconsidering approval of SouthCoast Wind, another planned Massachusetts project.

In recent weeks, Trump has deployed a range of tactics to stop offshore wind expansion, which was a cornerstone of former President Joe Biden’s efforts to combat climate change but has struggled with soaring costs and supply chain snags. Most notably, Trump’s Interior Department late last month issued a stop-work order on the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island, which is 80% complete.

In Wednesday’s court filing, attorneys for the Department of Justice said they would move by October 10 to vacate the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the New England Wind construction and operations plan.

Read the full article at Reuters

White House Orders Agencies to Escalate Fight Against Offshore Wind

September 4, 2025 — The White House has taken the extraordinary step of instructing a half-dozen agencies to draft plans to thwart the country’s offshore wind industry as it intensifies its governmentwide attack on a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser, are leading the effort, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Agencies that typically have little to do with offshore wind power have been drawn into the effort, the two people said. At the Health and Human Services Department, for instance, officials are studying whether wind turbines are emitting electromagnetic fields that could harm human health. And the Defense Department is probing whether the projects could pose risks to national security.

Last week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, said he was working with Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, as part of a “departmental coalition team” to investigate the risks from offshore wind farms.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Feds target fully permitted New England Wind project

September 4, 2025 —  The Trump administration ratcheted up its targeting of the offshore wind industry on Wednesday, stating its intent to revoke a key approval for the fully permitted New England Wind 1 project, which plans to use New Bedford for long-term operations.

In the document, filed as part of a lawsuit brought by ACK for Whales against the Avangrid project, the federal government said it is “intending to move no later than October 10 to remand and, separately, to vacate” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the construction and operations plan, a permit granted to the project in mid-2024.

Without the permit, the project cannot be built. Separately, the project has been in the process of securing a power purchase agreement with the state, another necessity for project buildout. The agreement has been delayed several times due to the Trump administration’s freeze on offshore wind permitting and the uncertainty it has created.

New England Wind 1 plans to construct the project out of Salem (a terminal yet to be built that last week lost $34 million in federal funding), but house its long-term operations and maintenance hub in New Bedford. Contingent on the project moving forward, the Danish company, Liftra, also plans to establish a crane manufacturing facility in the city.

New England Wind 1’s lease area is located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The project’s first phase plans to install up to 800 megawatts of energy.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

RHODE ISLAND: R.I. Gov. McKee asks to meet with Trump over Revolution Wind project still in limbo

September 4, 2025 — After a dozen days in limbo, state and federal officials keep ramping up the pressure on the Trump administration to let the Revolution Wind project resume. The offshore wind project already under construction south of Rhode Island was put on hold on Aug. 22, leaving workers in the lurch and risking critical energy reliability and climate change mandates.

In a Wednesday letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Gov. Dan McKee outlined the consequences of the stop-work order, while asking for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

“The stop-work order undermines efforts to expand our energy supply, lower costs for families and businesses, and strengthen regional reliability,” McKee wrote to Burgum. “This action puts hundreds of well-paid blue-collar jobs at risk by halting a project that is just steps away from powering more than 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.”

More than 1,000 union workers have spent much of the last two years building the 65-turbine project, 45 of which have been installed, as well as a pair of substations that will connect the power supply to Rhode Island and Connecticut. The 704 megawatts of nameplate capacity was set to be delivered by mid-2026, and already baked into the long-term plans for meeting Rhode Island’s decarbonization mandates under the state’s 2021 Act on Climate law. It is also critical to regional electrical grid reliability, especially in extreme weather events where fuel supply might be limited.

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current

VIRGINIA: Trump admin cancels $39M meant for Norfolk’s Fairwinds Landing because of wind energy association

September 4, 2025 — Norfolk’s Economic Development Authority will ask the Trump administration to reconsider its decision to cancel a grant meant to improve Fairwinds Landing.

The body made the decision during their monthly meeting Wednesday, five days after the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the $39 million in Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) funding would be withdrawn, due to the sites association with the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project.

The funding, first awarded to the authority in 2023 under the Biden administration, was to “assist in transforming the marine terminal at Fairwinds Landing into offshore wind logistics facility,”

Read the full article at WAVY

Trump administration moves to block Avangrid’s New England Wind project

September 3, 2025 — Trump administration lawyers said Wednesday they will move by Oct. 10 to vacate previous federal approval for Avangrid’s New England Wind project, a move applauded by commercial fishermen and offshore wind power opponents.

Avangrid’s owner, Spanish energy company subsidiary Iberdrola, planned the New England Wind 1 and 2 turbine arrays with a collective nameplate power rating of 2,600 megawatts. New England Wind 1 had been expected to be operational in 2029.

Now it’s the latest to fall before the administration’s campaign against virtually all forms of U.S. renewable energy development. News of the Department of Justice legal filing in the District of Columbia federal court was hailed by the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association.

“This is a great win for fishermen, New England’s coast, coastal communities, and endangered wildlife,” said Dustin Delano, NEFSA’s chief operating officer. “Unlike the Biden administration, which burdened the fishing industry with rushed wind lease projects, fishing bans, and overregulation, President Trump is prioritizing restoration and resilience.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Trump administration to reconsider SouthCoast Wind permit, legal filing says

September 3, 2025 —  The Trump administration will reconsider the permit for SouthCoast Wind, a Massachusetts offshore wind farm approved by the government of former U.S. President Joe Biden last year, according to a federal court filing seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

In a motion filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday, attorneys for the Department of Justice said the Interior Department intended to reconsider the approval of SouthCoast Wind’s construction and operations plan.

The legal maneuver is the latest move by President Donald Trump’s administration to stymie development of offshore wind energy, which he says is ugly, expensive and unreliable.

Read the full article at Reuters