Trump administration’s legal setbacks are good news for offshore wind – and the grid

The Trump administration suffered a series of legal setbacks this week after judges allowed work to resume on several offshore wind farms under construction on the East Coast.

The Interior Ministry had ordered the shutdown of five projects totaling 6 gigawatts of generating capacity in December, citing national security concerns. The court orders will allow construction to resume on three projects: Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, Empire Wind off the coast of New York, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off the coast of – you guessed it – Virginia.

The developers each filed lawsuits shortly after the Trump administration issued the stop-work order, which had been in effect for 90 days.

Announcing the shutdown just days before Christmas, the government raised concerns that wind farms would interfere with the operation of radars. This is a legitimate concern, one that the government and project developers have been grappling with throughout the site selection and permitting process. Wind farms can be located to minimize disruption to existing radar installations, and the radar equipment itself can be upgraded to filter out noise generated by swirling turbine blades.

President Trump himself has made no secret that he is not a fan of offshore wind: “I’m not really a fan of wind turbines,” he told oil executives last week.

During the first hearings, the judges were not impressed by the government’s reasoning. In three separate courtrooms in Virginia and Washington, D.C., the Trump administration’s arguments were met with skepticism.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, noted that the government failed to address several of plaintiff Equinor’s arguments in its lawsuit. Equinor, which develops Empire Wind, had claimed that the Interior Ministry’s order was “arbitrary and capricious”. “Your brief doesn’t even include the word arbitrary,” Nichols said, according to the Associated Press.

Nichols also questioned why the Trump administration was calling for a halt to construction when its main national security concern appeared to be the wind farm’s operation.

U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker, who heard the trial of coastal Virginia offshore wind developer Dominion Energy, questioned the government along similar lines. He also said the Interior Department’s order was too broad when considered in the context of the Virginia Project.

Two projects remain in limbo as their cases progress through the courts. Ørsted, which is developing Sunrise Wind, has a hearing scheduled for Feb. 2, while the developers of Vineyard Wind 1 only filed their complaint on Thursday.

The East Coast could provide up to 110 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2050, according to a Department of Energy study released in 2024. That would provide a significant boost to some of the most densely populated cities — and data center regions — in the country. The Northeast currently has the highest electricity costs in the country, while the Mid-Atlantic grid operator has recently come under fire for rising electricity prices in its territory. Offshore wind, as one of the cheapest forms of new generation capacity, has the potential to slow or reverse the trend.

The potential is even greater when looked at on a national scale. Offshore wind could produce 13,500 terawatt hours of electricity per year, three times more than current U.S. consumption.