Another Permitted Wind Farm Off Nantucket Targeted For Revocation By Trump Administration

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on the offshore wind industry continued Wednesday with the announcement that yet another wind farm slated for installation south of Nantucket is having its permits reviewed for potential revocation.

New England Wind was already threatened by Trump’s past attacks on offshore wind, including a recent move to strip $34 million in funding from a project intended to develop a vacant industrial facility in Salem into an offshore wind terminal, which New England Wind would have used as a staging ground. Now, the federal government seems poised to revoke its permit entirely.

“Federal Defendants now intend to move for remand and, separately, for vacatur of [the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s] decision to approve the [Construction and Operations Plan],” the Department of Commerce wrote in a court filing.

The motion by the federal agency was made in response to a federal lawsuit brought by the Nantucket-based group ACK For Whales, along with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head / Aquinnah, Green Oceans, a coalition of charter fishing groups, and seven individuals back in May 2025. The legal challenge alleges that the Departments of Interior and Commerce violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and other federal laws when they approved the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for the New England 1 and 2 projects.

New England Wind and Vineyard Wind are both projects advanced by Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish utility company Iberdrola. Avangrid has not returned requests for comment from the Current about either project. Both Vineyard Wind and New England Wind are covered by the so-called “Good Neighbor Agreement,” which was signed by the town of Nantucket and the offshore wind developer in 2020 and binds the town to convey support for the wind farm projects. Accordingly, the town’s response to the potential revocation of New England Wind has been muted compared to its public support for Trump’s other recent review orders, including a similar one just a day earlier for SouthCoast Wind.

The town had previously sued to force the federal government to reconsider its permits for SouthCoast wind. This is a markedly different strategy from the one the town adopted for Vineyard Wind and New England Wind during the Joe Biden administration before one of Vineyard Wind’s turbine blades collapsed into the ocean south of Nantucket last July, but the town claims that its stance on offshore wind hasn’t shifted.

“The Town’s position on offshore wind has not changed with political shifts. Our stance remains consistent,” the town wrote in reply to a previous Current article. “The Town’s decision to pursue legal action depends not on who is in the White House, but on whether the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) or a developer meets the legal minimum to avoid, minimize, or mitigate harm.”

The lease areas for New England 1 and New England 2, located west of Vineyard Wind, would include 129 wind turbines that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates could power more than 900,000 homes each year.

Vineyard Wind has avoided the brunt of Trump’s assault so far. While it has dealt with its own struggles since one of its turbine blades collapsed into the ocean and scattered debris across Nantucket’s south shore last July, it has yet to have a stop-work order issued by the Trump administration or face the revocation of its permits. This could be in part because Vineyard Wind is already delivering power to the grid, making it harder for the federal government to pull the plug.

Critics of the government’s push against offshore wind see Trump as favoring oil and gas over renewable energy projects despite the environmental costs of climate change, which could be especially pronounced on islands like Nantucket. They also point to the economic ramifications of blocking major construction projects that have already been permitted and, in some cases, have already hired hundreds of workers.

“President Trump said he was a job creator – he has turned into the biggest job destroyer of any President this country has seen,” Rodrigo Badaro, President of the North Shore Building Trades Council, said in a statement after the funding for the Salem port project was revoked. “It’s clear ‘Make America Great Again’ doesn’t include construction workers.”

But Wednesday’s court filing was a win for activist groups like ACK for Whales, which have long spoken out against the alleged harms of offshore wind and challenged the projects being developed off Nantucket.

“The government was so desperate to rush these projects that it cut corners and violated the law and didn’t care if it trampled on the Wampanoag sacred beliefs and rites, hurt the charter boat, fishing and lobster industries or wiped out the Right Whales,” ACK for Whales board member Val Oliver said. “The only thing that mattered was to get these environmentally destructive turbines built, costs to the rest of us be damned.”