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Revolution Wind can officially resume. But unlike the last time President Donald Trump ordered construction on an offshore wind project to pause, relief came through the courts rather than politicking.
A federal judge on Monday ruled in favor of the Danish energy giant Ørsted, whose $6.2 billion Rhode Island project was halted last month by the Interior Department without, as the judge put it, any “factual findings.” A similar stop-work order that froze construction on New York’s Empire Wind was lifted by Trump officials in May following one month of heavy lobbying — and reported backdoor deal-making — by lawmakers and diplomats.
Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan-era appointee serving the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by Revolution Wind to resume turbine construction while its complaint against the Interior Department works its way through the courts, which could take years. The project is 80% complete, and Ørsted released a statement on Monday saying workers will restart “as soon as possible.”
Monday’s decision marked a victory for Revolution Wind and could have broader legal ramifications for Trump’s ongoing war against offshore wind energy, given that several projects are still tangled up in litigation. And, if the recent ruling is any indication, the Trump administration may have a hard time convincing judges that walking away from already-approved wind farms makes sense.
“The Trump Administration’s erratic action was the height of arbitrary and capricious, and failed to satisfy any statutory provisions needed to halt work on a fully approved and nearly complete project. It was not a close call,” Connecticut’s Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, stated in response to Lamberth’s decision.
Twelve other high-profile lawsuits are actively challenging Biden-era approvals for eight U.S. wind farms, according to the research firm ClearView Energy Partners. Traditionally, the government defends projects it’s already greenlit. Legally, however, it can pick and choose which approvals to stand up for.
For example, three of those projects — New England Wind, SouthCoast Wind, and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project — could soon lose their federal approvals. None of the three have started construction yet, but in the past month, government officials have filed documents in court for each, trying to undo approvals granted by the Biden administration.
“These other cases are different procedurally, but [the Revolution Wind ruling] shows that the courts are taking this seriously and that the Trump administration took these actions without sufficient justification,” said Nick Krakoff, a senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation.
The latest blow came on Thursday, when government lawyers filed a motion to reverse its approval of SouthCoast Wind, a massive 141-turbine project slated for federal waters near Massachusetts’s coastline. Krakoff said that the legal argument is nearly identical to one filed in the U.S. District Court of Maryland the week prior seeking to take back approvals from the Maryland Offshore Wind Project.
Both filings invoke a new legal interpretation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that argues that the Interior Department must weigh other ocean activities — like commercial fishing and Coast Guard operations — in an “absolutist approach,” said Krakoff, to evaluate potential conflicts with wind farms.
The standard interpretation, employed for almost a decade by past administrations and already upheld in a 2024 court decision, instructs agencies to take a more balanced approach to evaluating multiple ocean users.
“It’s not unprecedented for a new administration to switch positions. But it is unprecedented to seek to remand a permit because of it,” said Krakoff, who called the Trump-era interpretation of the law a “coordinated attack” on thousands of clean energy jobs.
Oddly, the Trump administration appears to be defending some wind projects at the center of these legal challenges while trying to tank the three others.
For example, on Sept. 8, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed a letter signalling that it wants to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the anti-wind group Protect Our Coast NJ that challenges New York’s Empire Wind.
Then there is the exceptional case of Virginia. Earlier this month, E&E News reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) publicly defended Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, which is the only offshore wind farm currently being built in a Republican-led state. ClearView’s analysts believe this GOP support may explain why the Trump administration has not tried to remand approvals for the Virginia project in response to a lawsuit brought by the Heartland Institute and other right-leaning think tanks challenging its construction. Instead, on Friday, government lawyers asked the judge for a 90-day extension on filing a report on the Virginia project’s status.
Being inconsistent in when and how it deploys new legal interpretations could backfire for the Trump administration.
On Monday, Lamberth told government lawyers that “mandating the immediate pause to construction of a project whose approval the Bureau continues to defend in other cases is the height of arbitrary and capricious.”
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers are clearly frustrated that most of the offshore wind projects in Trump’s crosshairs are in solidly blue states at a moment when they have little power in Congress to fight back. Many Democrats see the courts as the best hope for surmounting the administration’s continued efforts to block the development of wind power, which they view as necessary for meeting growing electricity demand.
“One of our most important roles right now is to illustrate to people that the actions taken by this administration are creating shortages and … spikes in your [electricity] prices. Second is the litigation pathway,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said during a press call on Monday.
The longtime climate hawk discussed new data showing that electricity prices in the U.S. have risen by 10% since Trump took office. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have proposed legislation that would streamline energy project permitting, but that is not a near-term solution for wind developers, Schatz said, adding that litigation is the faster route towards “success.”
Revolution Wind’s stop-work order had been bleeding its developers of “more than $2 million per day,” according to court filings, and posing a risk to New England’s future grid reliability.
“The time frame to get a new law in place and enforce that new law is unlikely to match up with the time frame of a developer who is almost invariably working on borrowed money and can’t wait three and a half years while we sort ourselves,” said Schatz.
For Revolution Wind, Monday’s legal victory may only be temporary — federal officials could appeal the ruling. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment. A similar but separate lawsuit challenging Revolution Wind’s stop-work order, brought by the attorneys general of Rhode Island and Connecticut, is winding its way through the courts. Last week, the feds requested that this case be transferred to the U.S. District Court in D.C. so that it can be consolidated with the developers’ case.
If the 704-megawatt project reaches completion, its carbon-free electricity will feed into New England’s regional grid, serving utility customers who just endured a winter where power bills skyrocketed.
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