The Trump administration dealt a major blow to the fledgling US offshore wind industry yesterday by ordering a major wind project off the coast of New York to stop construction.
Secretary the US Department of the Interior Doug Burgum announced the move on X yesterday, pausing the Empire Wind Project pending “further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
Donald Trump has painted offshore wind as an environmental bogeyman since the campaign trail, falsely linking proposed projects to whale deaths without evidence while promising to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas at the same time. Now, his administration is trying to stop offshore wind farms from being built, even those that have already gained federal approvals.
Donald Trump has painted offshore wind as an environmental bogeyman
Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office that stopped leasing and permitting for new offshore wind projects. Empire Wind, however, has had a federal lease since 2017 and already had state and federal permits in place.
Equinor, the Norwegian company developing the project, confirmed in a press release today that it had suspended construction to comply with a notice it received from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “Empire is engaging with relevant authorities to clarify this matter and is considering its legal remedies, including appealing the order,” the release says.
Construction on Empire Wind, which Equinor says had a gross book value of roughly $2.5 billion, just started this month and was slated to finish in 2027. Once complete, it was supposed to produce enough carbon pollution-free electricity for 500,000 homes in New York. Construction employed 1,500 people, according to Equinor. The project included an onshore staging hub at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, anticipated to create about 1,000 union construction jobs.
“Stopping work on the fully federally permitted Empire Wind 1 offshore project should send chills across all industries investing in and holding contracts with the United States Government,” Liz Burdock, president and CEO of offshore energy trade group Oceantic Network said in an emailed statement. “Preventing a permitted and financed energy project from moving forward sends a loud and clear message to all businesses – beyond those in the offshore wind industry – that their investment in the US is not safe.”
The US lags far behind Europe and China in deploying offshore wind, even though it has more potential than many other nations to harness the resource from its vast coastlines. Offshore wind could meet up to a quarter of the nation’s power needs by 2050, and it can pair well with energy-hungry data centers that are pushing up power demand in the US.
But on top of financial woes brought on by tangled supply chains and rising project costs, offshore wind has faced stiff opposition from the commercial fishing industry and residents concerned about turbines affecting ocean views. A turbine failure off the coast of Massachusetts that led to a blade breaking off and plummeting into the ocean fomented fears about the potential environmental impact of wind farms, although necropsies point to vessel strikes and fishing gear as the leading causes of whale deaths.
“Stopping work on the fully federally permitted Empire Wind 1 offshore project should send chills across all industries investing in and holding contracts with the United States Government.”
“It’s the industrialization of our ocean, rubber-stamped by federal agencies and delivered by a foreign-owned corporation under the guise of climate action,” Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said in an opinion published in the New York Post last week.
Joe Biden had set a goal of growing US offshore wind capacity from 42 to 30,000 megawatts by 2030. Since winds are typically stronger over the ocean than on land, offshore turbines were seen as an abundant source of renewable energy that would help the US eliminate pollution from power plants and fight climate change. New York Governor Kathy Hochul vowed to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to stop Empire Wind “every step of the way” in a statement released yesterday.
“If Trump had any ounce of compassion or care for the American people, he would be bolstering renewable energy projects like Empire that create stable jobs, allow families to breathe easier, and save more on electricity,” Sierra Club deputy legislative director for clean energy and electrification Xavier Boatright said in an emailed statement. “Instead, Trump is yet again prioritizing the interests of Big Fossil Fuel, and making Americans pay the price.”
Oil and gas interests spent more than $75 million in campaign donations to get Trump elected last year. In January, Trump claimed “no new windmills” would be built while he’s in office, saying they “litter” the US like “garbage in a field.”