The offshore wind industry, the subject of a sustained campaign by the Trump administration to kill it in its infancy, won another round on Jan. 15 when the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the developer of the Empire Wind 1 farm a preliminary injunction that allows construction of the 54-turbine, 810-megawatt project, which is to send renewable electricity to New York City, to resume.
In December, the federal Interior Department issued a pause of leases for five wind farms under construction, including Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind off New York, and Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut. Gov. Kathy Hochul and the governors of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts wrote to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to demand rescission of the Trump administration’s pause, and developers of four of the wind farms sued the government in the hope of reversing the latest move to kill the nascent industry.
Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that construction of Revolution Wind, which is around 87-percent complete, can resume. The latest preliminary injunction allows construction of Empire Wind 1 to begin again, but Equinor, the Norwegian company developing it, said the underlying lawsuit challenging the Interior Department’s suspension order will proceed.
Empire Wind 1, according to a statement from the developer, “will now focus on safely restarting construction activities that were halted during the suspension period. In addition, the project will continue to engage with the U.S. government to ensure the safe, secure, and responsible execution of its operations.”
Empire Wind 1 is being developed under contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Once completed, the project is to provide power sufficient to electrify around 500,000 residences.
In a statement, Governor Hochul said Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind “were stopped under the bogus pretense of national security. When I heard this, I said one thing, ‘I’m the governor of New York. If there is a national security threat off the coast of New York, you need to tell me what it is — I want a briefing right now.’ Lo and behold, they had no answer. They had fake claims about radar. Radar can be addressed and handled as it has happened on many other projects in the past.”
The president issued a memorandum on the first day of his second term withdrawing all outer continental shelf areas from offshore wind leasing and directing a review of permitting practices, which halted new approval. In April, the Interior Department issued a stop-work order for Empire Wind 1, though this was later lifted. In August, the administration initiated investigations into imported turbine components and signaled its intent to revoke approvals for other wind projects. The administration’s most recent action, the Dec. 22 pause on leases for the five offshore wind farms under construction, has now experienced a second setback with the Jan. 15 preliminary injunction.
“Offshore wind is already delivering for Long Island,” Melissa Parrott, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, said in a statement. “South Fork Wind, New York’s first operational project, powers 70,000 homes while supporting hundreds of union jobs in construction, operations, and marine trades. Empire Wind builds on this success, bringing enough clean electricity for 500,000 homes while creating good-paying union careers and strengthening our grid.”
