It happened again. For the second time this year, the Trump administration has halted the construction of a massive offshore wind farm being built to power blue states.
On Friday, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Matthew Giacona, ordered the Danish wind developer Ørsted to stop all construction on the nearly complete Revolution Wind offshore project so the federal government can “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.” Giacona, a former lobbyist for offshore oil and gas companies, did not specify the nature of those concerns.
The move echoes an April order from the Interior Department that stopped all offshore work on New York’s Empire Wind project.
Last time, the controversial pause lasted just one month but cost the developer nearly $1 billion — and drove the project to the brink of cancellation. This time, with a Trump appointee now at the helm of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, it’s unclear how long this costly work stoppage might last.
Construction began on Revolution Wind in January 2024 and is now 80 percent complete, according to Ørsted. The wind farm is being built off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in a federally designated “wind energy area” that was created after a five-year-long consultation between the state of Massachusetts, coastal towns, federal agencies, and branches of the military including the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and Army Corps of Engineers.
Once the 704-megawatt project is complete, its cables will come ashore in Rhode Island and its carbon-free electricity will be fed into New England’s regional grid and serve utility customers who saw their power bills skyrocket this past winter. It’s one of five offshore wind projects under construction in U.S. waters. The country currently has only one fully operational utility-scale offshore wind project, South Fork, near Long Island, New York.
President Donald Trump promised that America would see “no new windmills” on his watch. Friday’s order is just the latest attempt to make good on that pledge: In recent months, the Trump administration has killed offshore wind leasing, paused permitting, and sunsetted tax credits critical to the economic viability of offshore wind farms.
The purpose given for Friday’s stop-work order — “national security interests” — has long-time wind industry insiders scratching their heads.
“There were no major military issues that came to the fore in New England,” said wind energy veteran Bill White in an interview with Canary Media. From 2009 to 2015, White represented Massachusetts on a BOEM-led intergovernmental task force focused on the responsible siting of offshore wind energy areas south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket islands.
“Was the military at the table, represented and consulted with during this stakeholder process? The answer is: very much so,” said White, who for much of his time on the task force worked for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center as senior director of offshore wind sector development.
White — who went on to oversee offshore wind as CEO of Avangrid Offshore, one of the developers of Massachusetts’ embattled Vineyard Wind project — said he’s aware of national security issues that have been raised about proposed offshore wind projects near Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, which have coastlines dotted with large military installations.
In April 2023, for example, the Pentagon flagged proposed wind energy areas along the central Atlantic Coast as “highly problematic.” But the Pentagon has not raised those kinds of high-level concerns over Revolution Wind — or any of the projects being built in New England’s waters, according to White. The Pentagon did not return a request for comment.
Development of the Revolution Wind project began more than a decade ago. In 2013, Deepwater Wind New England won a federal auction for two leases in the wind energy area designated by the intergovernmental task force; Ørsted later acquired those leases when it bought the company. From 2016 to 2020, the Danish firm assessed the site and continued to engage stakeholders, like local fishermen, according to BOEM records.
Between 2020 and 2023, Revolution Wind endured an extensive regulatory review, including from the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration. Since wind turbines have the potential to affect air-traffic radar and aviation navigation, the FAA conducted an airspace analysis. The agency ultimately approved the project under the condition that all turbines be built to lighting and marking standards that would ensure they’re visible to aircraft at night.
In August 2023, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers co-signed the authorization of plans for Ørsted to build 65 wind turbines for the Revolution Wind project. The National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also signed the authorization.
During Revolution Wind’s long road to construction, it had strong support from neighboring states, which have made ambitious renewable energy commitments in recent years.
“The Trump administration’s stop-work order on Revolution Wind undermines efforts to expand our energy supply, lower costs for families and businesses, and strengthen regional reliability,” said Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee, a Democrat, in a statement.
In a post on X, McKee said that he and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, also a Democrat, “will pursue every avenue to reverse the decision to halt work on Revolution Wind.” Lamont, in an Instagram post, called the order a “political move.”
This new fight between the two governors and the feds could play out similarly to the fight between New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the Trump administration over the Empire Wind project earlier this year. After weeks of developer Equinor threatening to walk away from the halted project due to the high costs of delayed construction, the Trump administration reversed course and lifted the ban, claiming it had struck a deal with Hochul, a Democrat, to allow a natural gas pipeline to be built in the state.
On the day the Interior Department lifted the order, Secretary Doug Burgum thanked Hochul in a social media post for her “willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity.” But a representative for Hochul’s office told Canary Media at the time that “no deal on any natural gas pipeline was reached.”
The Trump administration, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, has in recent months pushed for New England and in particular Massachusetts to build new gas pipelines.
McKee and Lamont — or perhaps Ørsted — could also opt for litigation, a route not taken by Hochul or Equinor during the Empire Wind drama.
The Trump administration’s stop-work order comes as Ørsted is seeking to raise billions of dollars from its shareholders to help complete Revolution Wind and its other fully permitted U.S. project, Sunrise Wind, after other financing options fell through.
In the earnings call announcing the fundraising effort earlier this month, Ørsted blamed its financial troubles on “unexpected developments outside our control.” Now the European firm is reeling from yet another unexpected blow from the Trump administration.
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Clare Fieseler, Canary Media grist.org
