Trump
suffers major losses in his war on offshore wind
The
administration’s arguments that offshore wind farms present a national security
risk failed to convince judges in three separate courts.
By Kelsey
Tamborrino, Josh Siegel, Lesley Clark and Niina H. Farah
01/18/2026
08:45 AM EST
President
Donald Trump’s long-running quest to demolish the U.S. offshore wind sector is
facing some serious blowback in federal court.
Three
different judges — including one appointed by Trump — last week allowed
construction to resume on multi-billion-dollar offshore wind projects off the
coasts of New England, New York and Virginia that the Interior Department was
trying to idle.
After
Congress shredded incentives for wind last year and the administration imposed
new permitting roadblocks, the industry’s streak of victories this week
represent a significant setback in Trump’s campaign to erase the Biden
administration’s clean energy agenda and deepen the country’s reliance on
fossil fuels.
Democrats
and wind supporters hailed the clean sweep in this week’s legal cases, even if
the ultimate fate of those massive offshore energy projects remains to be
determined.
“Trump is
getting his butt kicked again. The question is whether he learns from that,”
said Democratic Rep. Scott Peters of California.
The legal
decisions, Peters said, “reinforces what we’ve been saying: That this is
illegal. It’s a bad signal to the markets.”
Trump has
made no secret of his deep dislike of wind farms — particularly those built in
coastal waters. “My goal is to not let any windmill be built,” Trump told a
meeting of oil executives at the White House last week. “They’re losers.”
White
House spokesperson Taylor Rogers reiterated on Friday Trump’s contention that
wind power represents “the scam of the century.”
The Trump
administration paused the construction of projects because its “priority is to
put America First and protect the national security of the American people,”
she said. “The Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue,”
Rogers added.
Trump’s
Interior Department in December paused all five leases for large-scale offshore
wind projects that are currently under construction, citing publicly
undisclosed national security concerns. Those projects were approved as part of
then-President Joe Biden’s effort to create an offshore wind industry that
could feed clean electricity into the nation’s power grid and reduce the need
for fossil fuels.
The
administration’s stop-work orders are among the roadblocks for renewable energy
enacted by the Trump administration that also includes potentially revoking
permits for offshore wind projects approved under the Biden administration. And
they come with the added appeal for the administration of thumbing their nose
at efforts to address climate change, which Trump has frequently derided as a
hoax.
The
companies behind the impacted projects quickly filed lawsuits to lift the
stop-work orders, citing the billions of dollars already sunk into the projects
and a tricky coordination required to synchronize the installation vessels that
required the courts to act quickly.
A fourth
wind farm’s appeal will be heard Feb. 2.
Judge
Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, said the Trump administration’s lawyers had
failed to respond to several arguments from the developers of New York’s Empire
Wind project, and noted that the government’s national security concerns were
not enough to outweigh the harm to the project.
In his
ruling pertaining to the Revolution Wind project, Judge Royce Lamberth also did
not buy the administration’s arguments. The Ronald Reagan appointee pointed to
press interviews by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that focused on offshore
wind’s costs, its impacts on wildlife and “a variety of reasons unrelated to
national security.”
And Judge
Jamar Walker ruled Friday in Virginia that work on Dominion Energy’s Coastal
Virginia Offshore Wind project could proceed while the litigation continues.
The Biden appointee, too, said the administration failed to make a case for its
concerns.
“Ordinarily
a national security risk would weigh heavily in the government’s favor,” Walker
said, adding, however, the “evidence does not demonstrate the security risk is
so imminent” that a stop-work order is necessary.
The
decisions marked a near-term win for the projects’ developers and supporters of
the offshore wind industry.
“If you
are a developer, the lesson is don’t cower in the corner. You have to be
willing to fight for your legal rights,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich of New
Mexico, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
One legal
expert said Trump’s disdain for wind power appeared to undercut the
administration’s legal strategy.
“The
reality is that the animus that this administration has toward these projects
has forced it to cut corners with its reasoning,” said Joel Eisen, a law
professor at the University of Richmond. “It’s blinding them to making a good
and reasoned explanation as to why it is they want to stop work.”
Eisen
noted that under administrative law, the government must provide a sufficient
explanation for major actions such as blocking projects already under
construction.
“The
government is required to explain itself and obviously in all three of these
cases the judges are convinced that they haven’t,” Eisen said, noting the
judges were appointed by three different presidents but all reached the same
conclusion.
Yet,
analysts warned the decisions are unlikely to stop Trump’s crusade,
particularly as the rulings themselves could do little to calm the fears of
companies looking to invest in future offshore wind development, a
still-nascent industry in the United States.
The
suspension orders may still “serve the long-term purpose of injecting
significant uncertainty for offshore wind,” said Timothy Fox, the managing
director of ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm.
“A future
administration could support offshore wind, but we think the industry — and
perhaps as importantly — financiers may be wary of investing in a
capital-intensive sector with such demonstrable high election risk,” he said.
Other
analysts said Friday the court rulings will likely force the administration to
find other ways to try to impede offshore wind, even as the legal proceedings
play out.
“While
this blocks the latest targeting strategy, we expect the administration’s
animus to continue in the form of other challenges,” Paul Greenough, a senior
vice president on advisory firm Capstone’s energy team, wrote in an email.
Greenough
pointed to Interior’s other court filings that seek remands for key offshore
wind permits, as well as the potential for the administration to try to revive
national security issues, flag new “findings” for endangered species impacts or
other obstacles.
Craig
Rucker, the president of Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, which
challenged the Virginia project, urged Interior to appeal the decision on
Friday. “Instead of showing deference to well documented military objections, a
single federal judge, without any expertise in national security, has taken it
upon himself to substitute his judgment for the considered opinion of military
professionals,” Rucker said.
Dominion
noted in a press release after the Friday hearing that even as its lawsuit
proceeds, the company “will continue seeking a durable resolution of this
matter through cooperation with the federal government.”
The
company told Walker that it had been in frequent contact with Interior,
including as recently as December, and it was surprised by the stop order
issued later that month.
“In none
of these meetings was there an indication that an order was coming,” said
Dominion attorney James Auslander, a principal at the firm Beveridge &
Diamond.
Governors,
particularly in New England, have positioned the projects as vital to bringing
down energy costs in their states — some of which had been scheduled to begin
generating power this year. Attorneys general in Connecticut, New York and
Rhode Island — who have tussled with the administration over its efforts to
slash other climate initiatives — joined the developers and filed their own
lawsuits to contest the administration’s stoppage.
The New
England power grid operator said offshore wind projects are included in its
planning forecasts and are needed to help meet electricity demand. Attorneys
for the PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization stretching 13
states, supported CVOW’s motion and argued that the project will help provide
much-needed generation in the region amid already high demand.
“Given
the size of the project and the long lead times associated with development of
alternatives, further delay of the project will cause irreparable harm to the
67 million residents of this region that depend on continued reliable delivery
of electricity,” the RTO said in a recent filing.
Trump
administration officials met with a bipartisan group of governors on Friday on
plans to direct PJM to hold a special auction for technology companies to fund
the construction of new power plants needed to supply data centers — part of
the president’s effort to address growing affordability concerns.
Trump
energy officials have repeatedly put baseload energy sources, like natural gas
and nuclear, at the center of their agenda, while targeting wind power as
intermittent and unreliable.
Others
contend that the stop-work orders may have impacts beyond states’ borders.
Alaska
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is traveling this week to Copenhagen, Denmark,
told POLITICO she is hoping to meet with Ørsted, the Danish developer of two of
the projects impacted by the stop-work orders.
“You have
this project that has been underway for years, millions of dollars, 80 percent
complete, and then you have, ‘Sorry, that’s not on our approved list.’ Now they
go through the courts,” she said of Ørsted’s Revolution Wind project.
“OK, now
we’re back on. But what is the message that is sent to Ørsted? What is the
message that is sent to any of these companies about the reliability of working
on a project in the United States? I worry about that.”
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