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RHODE ISLAND: Rhode Island Energy breaks off contract with SouthCoast Wind amid federal uncertainty

November 17, 2025 — Rhode Island’s second attempt to grow its offshore wind portfolio is dead in the water.

Michael Dalo, a spokesperson for Rhode Island Energy, confirmed in an email to Rhode Island Current Friday morning that the company ended its negotiations with SouthCoast Wind to purchase power from the project.

The news comes more than a year after Rhode Island officials unveiled a tentative contract with SouthCoast Wind developers to buy 200 megawatts of electricity from the project planned south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Negotiations finalizing the deal stalled multiple times due to a series of setbacks by the Trump administration, including the pullback of a key federal permit for the project.

Dalo cited the federal uncertainty facing the offshore wind industry as reason for the cutoff of contract negotiations.

“After several [power purchase agreement] negotiation extensions and continued uncertainty in the offshore wind industry, we were unable to come to agreeable terms” Dalo said in his email. “We remain fully supportive of the offshore wind industry and look forward to future clean energy [sic] opportunities as the industry evolves.”

He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions including when the deal was officially cast aside. The latest deadline, Nov. 1, came and went with no public acknowledgement from either party on the status of the talks.

SouthCoast Wind also did not immediately respond to inquiries for comment on Friday.

Disappointing, but not surprising, was how Amanda Barker, the Rhode Island state committee lead for New England for Offshore Wind, characterized the news.

Read the full article at News From the States

Judge rules Trump administration can review finalized permit for offshore wind project near Mass.

November 6, 2025 — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can reconsider a major environmental permit for SouthCoast Wind, a proposed project near Massachusetts.

The decision marks yet another blow to the offshore wind industry, and reinforces a sense of uncertainty for all energy developers, who in the past, have been able to rely on a final federal permit being, in fact, final.

In a five page order, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee to the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., said the Trump administration could take a second look at the project’s Construction and Operations Plan. The COP, as it’s typically called, is the last big permit an offshore wind projects needs before it can begin construction. SouthCoast Wind’s permit was issued in January, just days before Trump resumed office.

Read the full article at wbur

Judge allows Interior to rethink New England wind permit

November 6, 2025 — A federal judge has dealt a further blow to the beleaguered U.S. offshore wind industry, allowing the Trump administration to reconsider approval of a massive wind energy development planned off the Massachusetts coast.

Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday sided with the White House, allowing the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to reopen a Biden-era decision approving construction and operations plans for the industrial-scale SouthCoast Wind project.

The decision comes as the administration has sought to dismantle wind energy, and it came over the vociferous objections of the project developer.

Read the full article E&E News

Trump administration can reconsider SouthCoast Wind approval, judge rules

November 5, 2025 — A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Interior Department may reconsider the Biden administration’s approval of the SouthCoast Wind project planned off the coast of Massachusetts.

The order is a victory for the Trump administration, which argued that it had identified issues with the project’s environmental analysis and that a review could result in a withdrawal of the SouthCoast permit.

Read the full article at Reuters

Judge grants BOEM request to reconsider key permit for SouthCoast Wind

November 5, 2025 –A judge on Tuesday granted a federal agency’s request to remand a key permit that it had given in January to SouthCoast Wind, an offshore wind project planned off the Massachusetts coast.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Interior Department agency that manages offshore wind development, in September asked a judge for a remand so that it can reconsider its approval, which greenlit project construction for up to 147 turbines south of Nantucket and Vineyard Wind.

BOEM is effectively re-opening the review, which started in 2021 and lasted years, citing President Donald Trump’s day-one wind memo directing the Interior Department to carry out a “comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”

The agency could ultimately decide to revoke the SouthCoast Wind permit, or require new conditions for the developer to meet to receive approval.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

RHODE ISLAND: R.I. energy regulators approve SouthCoast Wind transmission line plan

November 5, 2025 — The financing and federal permitting for SouthCoast Wind remains murky.

But the path is clear for the Massachusetts offshore wind project to run power lines up the Sakonnet River and across Portsmouth to Mount Hope Bay, with approval from the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board on Tuesday.

Power purchase agreements between the project developer and Massachusetts and Rhode Island utility suppliers are not yet signed — despite a Nov. 1 deadline — amid continued uncertainty over the staying power of offshore wind under the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in D.C. granted the administration’s request Tuesday to reconsider a key federal permit which was already approved in the waning days of the Biden administration. The court decision marks a major setback to the already struggling project, allowing the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to start anew on a comprehensive review of potential environmental and economic consequences of the project.

A spokesperson for SouthCoast Wind did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the court order Tuesday afternoon.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

Trump Can Reconsider Permit for Offshore Wind Farm, Judge Rules

November 5, 2025 — A federal judge in Washington ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may reconsider the Biden-era approval of SouthCoast Wind, a wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.

The decision dealt a setback to the developers of the project, a joint venture between the energy companies EDP Renewables and ENGIE. And it handed a victory to the White House, which has ordered a half-dozen federal agencies to draft plans to thwart offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the project developers would not “suffer immediate and significant hardship” if the Trump administration were allowed to reconsider the permit.

The decision would effectively allow the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to re-evaluate its approval of the project’s construction and operations plan. The agency had approved the plan on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Mr. Trump’s second term began.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Trump administration seeks to revoke SouthCoast Wind approval

September 23, 2025 — The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court to revoke federal approval for the SouthCoast Wind project off Massachusetts. Striking at the planned array of 141 turbines is the latest move by the Trump administration to stamp out surviving renewable energy projects approved during the Biden presidency.

The project with a planned 2.4 gigawatt nameplate rating took four years to complete the permitting process and “could now arbitrarily lose approval for its construction and operations plan,” advocates with the BlueGreen Alliance said. “This is the last major federal permit wind projects need before putting turbines into the water and was awarded to SouthCoast Wind after years of careful review.”

The Sept. 18 court maneuver targeting SouthCoast Wind came on the heels of the Trump administration seeking to revoke permits for the US Wind project off Ocean City, Md. SouthCoast was one of the last acts in the Biden administration’s push to move offshore wind projects forward. Its final permit was issued Jan. 17, three days before Trump’s inauguration and his directive that same day to suspended further action on wind power projects.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

BOEM Tells Court it Wants to Resume Review of Permits for SouthCoast Wind

September 22, 2025 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management formally filed with a federal court on Thursday, September 18, calling for the court to set aside the actions of the Biden administration so that it can restart the environmental review on a Massachusetts offshore wind farm project as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing review of the industry.

The Department of Justice made the filing to the federal court as part of a legal action brought in March 2025 by Nantucket, which was challenging the approval of the Construction and Operation Plan for the proposed 2.4 GW SoutCoast Wind. The Department of the Interior and its BOEM are parties to the suit. They have asked that the case be postponed and the permits, which were granted on January 17, just days before the end of the Biden presidency, undergo further review.

The project, which was approved for up to 141 wind turbines and up to five offshore substation platforms, would be located 20 miles south of Nantucket and approximately 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. It is being developed by Ocean Winds, which is a joint venture between EDP Renewables and Engie. They won the lease for the project originally known as Mayflower Wind at the end of 2018, and the company points out that it spent four years in the review and approval process before the Department of the Interior issued its Record of Decision on December 20.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

In latest anti-wind action, Trump administration moves to revoke SouthCoast Wind permit

September 22, 2025 — In another attack on offshore wind, the Trump administration is looking to reconsider a key permit for SouthCoast Wind, a planned 141-turbine project off the Massachusetts coast.

The move comes a week after it revoked the same permit for a proposed wind farm near Maryland, and represents the latest escalation in the administration’s attempt to kneecap the offshore wind industry. Already, the multi-agency effort has resulted in frozen federal permits, restrictions on where wind farms can be built, and new reviews of existing regulations to make sure they they “align with America’s energy priorities under President Donald J. Trump.”

On Thursday, the government filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to take back its approval of the SouthCoast Wind project’s “construction and operations plan,” or COP. The COP is the last major federal permit an offshore wind project needs before it can start putting turbines in the water.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had approved SouthCoast’s COP on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before President Trump’s second term began.

“Based on its review to date, BOEM has determined that the COP approval may not have fully complied with the law regulating the use of federal waters over the outer continental shelf,” the government wrote. “That is reason enough to grant a remand.”

In a statement, SouthCoast Wind said the company “intends to vigorously defend our permits in federal court.”

Read the full article at Rhode Island PBS