On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it has suspended leases for all five offshore wind farms currently under construction in the US. This move comes despite the fact that these projects have already installed significant in-water and on-land hardware; one of them is almost completed. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, Home Affairs attributes the decisions to a secret report from the Ministry of Defense.
The second Trump administration announced its hostility to offshore wind energy literally on day one, issuing an executive order on Inauguration Day calling for a temporary halt to the issuance of permits for new projects pending a reevaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that decision, noting that the government has shown no evidence that it was even trying to initiate the reevaluation it said was necessary.
But a number of projects have gone through the entire permitting process and construction has begun. Until today, the government had tried to stop it in an erratic, hesitant manner. Empire Wind, an 800 MW farm being built off the coast of New York, was blocked by the Department of the Interior, which claimed the permits had been approved on a rush basis. That hold was lifted after lobbying and negotiations by New York and property developer Orsted, and the Interior Ministry never revealed why it changed its mind. When the Department of the Interior blocked a second Orsted project, Revolution Wind, off the coast of southern New England, the company took the government to court and won a ruling that allowed construction to continue.
