Federal Courts Block Trump’s Attempt to Suspend Offshore Wind Farms
A string of federal court rulings has effectively unraveled the Trump administration’s attempt to halt offshore wind construction along the U.S. East Coast, with the latest decision clearing Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project to resume work immediately.
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction sought by Sunrise Wind LLC, lifting a suspension imposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on December 22, 2025. The ruling allows construction activities covered by the order to restart while litigation over BOEM’s action continues.
“The Project will resume construction work as soon as possible, with safety as the top priority, to deliver affordable, reliable power to the State of New York,” Sunrise Wind said in a statement following the decision.
The Sunrise Wind ruling marks the fifth consecutive courtroom defeat for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s national security-based suspension of East Coast offshore wind projects. Federal judges in Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and Virginia have now cleared all five affected developments—Sunrise Wind, Vineyard Wind, Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, Equinor’s Empire Wind, and Ørsted’s Revolution Wind—to resume construction.
The administration argued that large offshore wind turbines could interfere with radar systems, potentially obscuring legitimate targets or generating false readings near densely populated coastal areas. Burgum cited “emerging national security risks” and the proximity of projects to the U.S. East Coast when announcing the suspension last December.
Courts, however, have so far been unconvinced. In the Vineyard Wind case decided January 27, a federal judge in Massachusetts found that BOEM’s order likely “violates applicable law” and would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” if allowed to stand. In the Empire Wind case, U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker ruled on January 15 that the suspension was overly broad and not narrowly tailored, noting that the government’s stated radar concerns largely related to wind farm operations rather than construction activity.
The financial impact of the work stoppages was severe. Empire Wind alone faced stop-work costs of up to $50 million per week, while Revolution Wind incurred losses exceeding $15 million weekly. Equinor warned the court that terminating Empire Wind could strand more than $4 billion already invested, trigger $850 million in termination fees tied to construction contracts, and require an additional $355 million to dismantle and mothball assets.
Dominion Energy reported that delays to its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project cost roughly $5 million per day, contributing to a $300 million increase that pushed the project’s total cost to about $11.5 billion.
The court victories come against the backdrop of a sharply contracting U.S. offshore wind pipeline. Between the third quarters of 2024 and 2025, the number of active projects fell from 45 to 23, while planned capacity dropped from nearly 56 gigawatts to about 25 gigawatts. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and European turbine components, along with the cancellation of $679 million in federal port grants, have added further strain.
Burgum signaled the administration’s broader stance in September, stating that “there won’t be future offshore wind built in America” under current policies.
For now, the rulings give developers breathing room. Construction is set to resume across all five projects, even as the underlying legal challenges to BOEM’s December 22 order continue—cases that could ultimately define how far executive authority extends when national security is invoked to halt major energy infrastructure.
source gcaptain.com