A federal judge ruled Monday that the 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind project, located off the coast of New York, can resume construction. The wind farm is nearly halfway complete and, before the stop-work order, was expected to begin producing electricity this year.
Ørsted said in a statement that it will “restart impacted activities immediately.”
The December order had cited ambiguous national security concerns in halting construction of Sunrise Wind and the other offshore wind farms. But Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found this justification insufficient after reviewing the classified report detailing those threats. He granted project developer Ørsted a preliminary injunction that allows work to proceed as the complaint moves through the legal system.
It’s the fifth such court order in recent weeks, and a welcome reprieve for a sector that promises to provide huge amounts of clean electricity to the East Coast in a time of surging demand.
In mid-January, the 704-MW Revolution Wind project, which is being developed off the coast of Rhode Island by Ørsted, became the first to receive an injunction. By the end of the month, every project aside from Sunrise Wind had secured a similar ruling and restarted work. Vineyard Wind, an installation so close to completion that it is already partially supplying power to the New England grid, was the latest to do so. Its final turbine tower left the New Bedford, Massachusetts, port last Wednesday.
The December order from the Trump administration ground construction of the megaprojects to a halt, costing developers millions of dollars, delaying the arrival of much-needed new electricity, and threatening the outright cancellation of the multibillion-dollar developments.
It also capped off a yearlong assault from the Trump administration against the emerging sector.
That assault has largely been successful. Offshore wind was once seen as the future cornerstone of Northeastern grids, but now only a fraction of what was once planned for the next decade is likely to get built: Research firm BloombergNEF slashed its forecast for 2035 offshore wind capacity by a staggering 85% between November 2024 and October 2025.
But the Trump administration has, so far, failed to permanently stop the construction of the five projects already underway. It’s not for lack of trying.
Last April, the administration issued a stop-work order to New York’s Empire Wind, one of the five projects that was halted by the December order as well.
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