Wind Farms Sue Trump Administration Over Suspension

Three offshore wind farms targeted by the Trump administration’s recent suspension of existing offshore wind leases are suing to continue construction work.

Empire Offshore Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and Revolution Wind have all filed lawsuits seeking relief from the order in the last two weeks. The wind farms, all of which are under construction, allege that Trump’s order is “unlawful” and could threaten thousands of jobs.

Announced by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the Trump administration’s offshore wind freeze is based on alleged risks to national security, including radar interference. Relying in part on classified reports from the Department of Defense, Burgum said that the pause “addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.”

In a press release, Equinor, the Norwegian energy company behind Empire, wrote that “Empire has coordinated closely with numerous federal officials on national security reviews since it executed its lease for the project in 2017, including with the Department of War, and has complied with relevant national security related requirements identified as part of the regulatory process. In addition, Empire meets regularly with officials charged with oversight of security issues for the project, including weekly meetings with the U.S. Coast Guard and other marine first responders.”

Revolution Wind, a joint venture between Orsted and Global Infrastructure Partners, has made similar arguments, saying that the pause violates federal law and that it had consulted with the Department of Defense on potential national security issues, going as far as to reach a formal mitigation agreement.

The freeze, the culmination of a lengthy campaign against offshore wind from the Trump administration, stopped work on five offshore wind farms along the East Coast, including Vineyard Wind near Nantucket. So far, Vineyard Wind has not joined the lawsuits.

According to a Dec. 22 letter from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to Vineyard Wind, the federal government is allowing the offshore wind farm to continue producing power while the suspension is in effect.

"Even though all ongoing activities at this project are suspended, you may perform any activities that are necessary to respond to emergency situations and/or to prevent impacts to health, safety, and the environment over the next 90 days and during any subsequent extensions," wrote Matthew N. Giacona, BOEM's acting director, in the letter to Vineyard Wind. "In addition, given that this project is partially generating power, you may continue any activities from those wind turbines that are necessary for the current level of power generation."

Trump’s assault on offshore wind has already received some legal pushback, including an order from a federal judge that struck down his earlier blanket ban on new offshore and onshore wind farms. Now, his administration will have to navigate a quagmire of legal challenges from energy companies facing potentially existential threats to their U.S. offshore wind investments.

Responses to the freeze on offshore wind have been mixed. Some anti-offshore wind activists have hailed the decision, while environmentalist organizations have largely criticized it. Four Northeast governors, including Massachusetts governor Maura Healey, who spoke out against the pause, demanded a classified briefing from the Trump administration to explain the unknown national security risks cited in the ban.

"It strains credulity to believe that vital, substantial projects that underwent many federal reviews and processes, including by the DoD (Department of Defense), all of a sudden present new, existential, unforeseen threats," the governors wrote in a letter to U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

This is not the first time Trump has invoked national security concerns in his campaign against offshore wind. In the executive order that paused new leases for wind farms across the United States, Trump cited unspecified “national security interests” to justify the pause.

The Trump administration has been vague about the national security concerns posed by offshore wind, referring to classified reports not available to the public, but did cite an unclassified report claiming that the turbines create radar interference known as clutter.

A report released by the Department of Energy says that “the clutter created by wind turbines typically increases the false alarm detection rate of a radar…potentially impacting their ability to perform their mission” when placed directly in the radar’s line of sight, and that “to date, no mitigation technology has been able to fully restore the technical performance of impacted radars.”

The year-old report did not initially spark the Trump administration to halt offshore wind, and the issue of radar interference has been discussed for years, with some experts minimizing the issue and other reports suggesting it could have a major impact on the offshore wind industry.

Some national security experts have disputed the administration’s claims about the impact of offshore wind on national security.

National security expert and former Commander of the USS Cole Kirk Lippold told the Associated Press and the New York Times that “the record of decisions all show that the Department of Defense was consulted at every stage of the permitting process,” and argued that the projects would benefit national security because they would diversify the country’s energy supply.

A 2020 report released by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found that Vineyard Wind would have a “moderate” impact on radar, primarily on SeaSonde radar used to measure coastal ocean currents. It did not project any impact on the Air Route Surveillance or NEXRAD Radars used by the Department of Defense, as it found no such radar within the project’s line of sight.

The only two wind farms off the east coast of the United States that are not affected by the Trump administration's pause are the fully operational Block Island Wind, off Rhode Island, and South Fork Wind, off New York. Neither is close to Nantucket.