Judge allows a third offshore wind project to resume construction as the industry challenges Trump

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A federal judge ruled Friday that work on a Virginia offshore wind project could resume, the third project this week to successfully challenge the Trump administration in court.

The administration announced last month it was suspending leases for at least 90 days on five East Coast offshore wind projects because of national security concerns. Its announcement did not reveal specifics about those concerns.

Developers and states sued in an effort to block the order. Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, was the first.

In federal court in Virginia on Friday, a judge said he was granting the Richmond-based company’s request for a preliminary injunction, according to the record from the hearing. This allows construction to resume while Dominion Energy’s lawsuit challenging the government’s order proceeds.

In federal court for the District of Columbia, judges ruled this week that construction could also resume on the Empire Wind project for New York by Norwegian company Equinor, and the Revolution Wind project for Rhode Island and Connecticut, by Danish company Orsted.

President Donald Trump has targeted offshore wind from his first days back in the White House. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said this week that Trump has been clear that “wind energy is the scam of the century.” Rogers said the pause is meant to protect the national security of the American people, and “we look forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor who has been following the lawsuits, said the three judges essentially concluded that the government did not show that the national security risk is so imminent that construction must halt.

“They concluded that Trump’s effort to halt the important, but costly, projects lacked support and would injure the entities building them, so the projects must be permitted to proceed,” Tobias said.

Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, applauded this week’s federal court rulings, which enable union workers to return to the job sites.

“With energy demand surging and prices spiking, the last thing our government should do is take any form of power generation offline,” McGarvey said in a statement. “The men and women of NABTU are proud to be constructing every offshore wind project in the United States, all under strong project labor agreements. These rulings mean our members can get back to work and keep affordable, clean, reliable power moving to our communities.”

Large, ocean-based wind farms are the linchpin of plans to shift to renewable energy in East Coast states that have limited land for onshore wind turbines or solar arrays. Orsted is also suing over the pause of its Sunrise Wind project for New York.

The fifth paused project is Vineyard Wind, under construction in Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind LLC, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, joined the rest of the developers in challenging the administration on Thursday. They filed a complaint in District Court in Boston.

Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind has been under construction since early 2024. It will consist of 176 offshore wind energy turbines providing enough electricity to power about 660,000 homes.

Dominion Energy argued that the government’s order is “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional. It said after the hearing that it will now focus on restarting work to ensure the project can begin delivering critical energy in just weeks. It says the project is essential to meet dramatically growing energy needs driven by dozens of new data centers.

Virginia’s U.S. senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, along with U.S. Reps. Bobby Scott and Jennifer McClellan, said in a joint statement that the ruling is a victory for the state’s residents, who otherwise “would face increased energy costs as a result of the Trump administration’s shortsighted opposition to clean energy.”

Trump has dismissed offshore wind developments as ugly, but the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is about 27 miles (43 kilometers) off the shores of Virginia Beach.

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