Saving Seafood

Trump administration to pay French company $1B to walk away from US offshore wind leases

March 24, 2026 — The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.

TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.

President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders.

The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.″

Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

Vineyard Wind 1 completes turbine installation after court ruling

March 17, 2026 — After a reprieve from a U.S. Department of Interior suspension in December, the offshore wind company Vineyard Wind 1 installed the last of its turbine blades on Friday.

“With the installation of the final blades, Vineyard Wind completed its offshore construction program. Vineyard Wind continues to deliver power to the New England grid,” said Vineyard Wind spokesman Craig Gilvarg in an email to the Times on Monday.

The last shipment of turbine blades for the $4.5 billion Vineyard Wind 1 project headed to the site south of Martha’s Vineyard last week.

The project had been in danger of stalling when the Trump administration in late December issued a stop-work order.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

U.S. Offshore Wind Projects Report Progress After Resuming Offshore Work

February 26, 2026 — Three of the five offshore wind projects under construction in the northeast U.S. have each signaled this week strong progress. It comes after each project received preliminary injunctions against the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which had imposed stop-work orders in late December.

Speaking to investors on February 25, the executives of Iberdrola, one of the partners in Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts, said as far as they are concerned, the project is complete. Executive Chairman Ignacio Galan said as an engineer, he sees the project as completed while confirming that 60 of the 62 wind turbines are now fully installed. CEO Pedro Azagra added that the project is between 80 and 85 percent operational, with between 52 and 55 of the turbines exporting electricity to the grid. They reported that the final two turbines would be installed in the coming days.

Reports have said the wind turbine installation vessel was contracted only until the end of February. It will need to depart promptly for its next assignment.

Speaking to investors earlier in the week, the executives of Dominion Energy also highlighted progress on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project near Virginia Beach. They said the progress on fabrication is excellent, with around 70 percent of the towers and 30 percent of the blades fabricated, which tracks well with the schedule.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Judge Hands Trump a Fifth Loss in His Effort to Halt Offshore Wind Projects

February 3, 2026 — A federal judge on Monday struck down the Interior Department’s order to halt work on a multibillion-dollar wind farm off the coast of New York State, the fifth time the courts have ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to throttle the country’s offshore wind industry. The administration is now 0-5 in its effort to stop wind farms under construction along the East Coast.

Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction that would allow the developer of the New York project, known as Sunrise Wind, to restart construction while the broader legal battle unfolds.

In December, the Interior Department ordered all work to halt on Sunrise Wind and four other wind farms off the East Coast. To justify the sweeping move, officials cited a classified report by the Defense Department that they said found the projects to be a national security threat.

But Judge Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, said he was unpersuaded by the government’s claims about national security after reviewing the classified report under seal. He said the actions of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had caused “irreparable harm” to the developer of Sunrise Wind.

Read the full article at The New York Times

How offshore wind permits handled DOD concerns before Interior’s pause

January 6, 2026 — Citing classified reports, the Interior Department last month shut down construction of five offshore wind projects off the East Coast.

A Department of Defense classified assessment, completed in November, contained information about “the rapid evolution of relevant adversary technologies and the resulting direct impacts to national security from offshore wind projects,” according to copies of the similar letters sent to each project’s owner.

“These impacts are heightened by the projects’ sensitive location on the East Coast and the potential to cause serious, immediate, and irreparable harm to our great nation,” said the letters, which were sent by Matthew Giacona, acting director at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full article at E&E News

US judge weighs if Trump administration can lawfully halt wind projects

November 19, 2025 — A federal judge on Tuesday wrestled with whether President Donald Trump‘s administration had acted lawfully when it halted permitting of new wind projects nationwide.

U.S. District Judge Patti Saris, during a hearing in Boston in a lawsuit by 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, questioned whether federal agencies could lawfully implement the Trump-directed pause by “simply saying the president told me to do it.”

The U.S. Departments of Commerce and Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency had all acted to implement a directive the president made on his first day back in office on January 20 to halt offshore wind lease sales and stop issuing permits, leases and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects.

He issued that directive while also moving to ramp up the federal government’s support for the fossil fuel industry and maximize output in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, after campaigning for the presidency on the refrain of “drill, baby, drill.”

Read the full article at Reuters

The Feds Had Questions. Court Filings Claim Revolution Wind Developers Didn’t Answer Them

September 17, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s opposition to offshore wind crystallized long before he won re-election. But the justification for the administration’s abrupt halt to the Revolution Wind project on Aug. 22 has remained murky.

Until now.

New court filings from the U.S. Department of Justice reveal the rationale behind the U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) decision to shut down the 65-turbine project that was already 80% finished: Developers allegedly failed to turn in required plans on how the project off Rhode Island’s coastline would affect national ocean research and defense work.

“As of the date of this Declaration, still DOI not received any information that these requirements have been satisfied and given how long they remain pending, the department has concerns as to whether they will ever be met,” Adam Suess, acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management for the Interior Department, wrote in a Sept. 12 affidavit.

Suess’ written testimony counters the criticism from state officials and project developers accusing the Trump administration of arbitrary and unlawful abuses of power in a pair of federal lawsuits filed Sept. 4.

Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, co-developers of the $5 billion wind project, filed their lawsuit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and other federal agencies and directors in D.C., while attorneys general in Rhode Island and Connecticut took their legal challenge to Rhode Island federal court. The two southern New England states were under contracts to buy electricity from the 704-megawatt project starting next year. Now in limbo, thousands of labor jobs are on the line, along with both states’ abilities to meet their climate change mandates and the reliability of the regional electric grid.

Read the full article at Rhode Island PBS

NEW JERSEY: Federal Action on Wind Energy Fuels Save LBI Agenda

August 28, 2025 — The U.S. Department of Interior’s recent announcement it is launching a full evaluation of offshore wind regulations is being lauded by a local grassroots organization.

“This reform effort is a clear response to concerns we raised in our July 2025 petition calling for the cancellation of Atlantic Shores North and South areas of the coast off Long Beach Island, Brigantine and Atlantic City,” Bob Stern, president and co-founder of Save LBI, said.

Stern thanked Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum for his initiative in revisiting the regulatory guidelines he said failed communities and the environment.

In an Aug. 11 missive to the interior department, Stern urged early stakeholder involvement through the advance notice of proposed rule making, saying it would provide the community, scientists, local government and others the ability to be part of the process while new guidelines are being developed.

Among the key areas to be reimagined are defining what areas are off limits for wind development based on criteria that includes distance from military radar, whale migration and shoreline; requiring project proposals to link location and design with a singular environmental impact statement treating all proposals in a region as alternatives; strengthening marine mammal protection and require decommissioning plans for turbine removal.

Read the full article at The Sand Paper

Trump adds new level of scrutiny to wind and solar projects

July 18, 2025 — The Interior Department said Thursday that it would add additional layers of review for wind and solar energy projects, following President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending any “preferential treatment” for renewable energy.

The new requirement threatens to trip up the approval process as wind and solar projects race to begin construction by a deadline next July to qualify for tax credits, which have been gutted by Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill that Congress approved this month. The department’s policies apply to projects on federal lands and waters, but generally not to those on private property.

Also on Thursday, Trump issued a proclamation exempting several coal plants in Ohio, Colorado and Illinois from stricter Biden-era rules limiting mercury and other toxic emissions through 2029.

“The Federal Government plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the Nation’s power supply remains secure and reliable,” the proclamation said. “Forcing energy producers to comply with unattainable emissions controls jeopardizes this mission.”

Separate proclamations gave exemptions from toxic emissions rules to 25 chemical manufacturers including Shell Chemical and to certain iron ore processing facilities, including two operated by the U.S. Steel Corporation.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

Interior finishes review of Maryland offshore wind project

July 30, 2024 — The Interior Department released a final environmental review Monday of what could be the first offshore wind farm off the coast of Maryland, noting its potential to disturb fisheries and marine life.

Developed by US Wind, the three-phase wind array could power up to 770,000 homes, if approved by the Biden administration.

The final environmental analysis released Monday brings the project closer to that green light. If approved, the project would be the 10th offshore wind array advanced by the Biden administration. The White House aims to reach 16 approved offshore wind projects by the end of the year to fuel its goal of installing enough offshore wind to power 10 million U.S. homes by the end of the decade.

Read the full article at E&E News