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President Donald Trump has escalated his war against offshore wind, freezing all five under-construction projects, including Vineyard Wind, and using the Department of Defense (now called the Department of War) in his clampdown.
On Monday morning, the Interior Department announced it is immediately “pausing” the leases for Vineyard Wind, Revolution Wind, Sunrise Wind, Empire Wind, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, due to “national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports.” A press release from Interior asserts the radar interference created by wind arrays is a national security threat.
Vineyard Wind is almost done with construction, with only one turbine tower left to send out, and then some blade sets to install. It has been sending power to the grid all through the year. It is unclear if the project must now cease sending power.
“Their leases will be suspended due to national security concerns,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News during an appearance Monday. “During this time of suspension, we’ll work with companies to try to find a mitigation. We completed the work that President Trump has asked us to do. The Department of War has come back conclusively.”
The federal government has provided no timeline for this review of under-construction leases. But Dominion Energy, which is building Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the largest project of the bunch, in a statement said the Interior issued a “90-day suspension of work.”
Previous suspensions under stop work orders, each of which lasted about one month, cost developers tens of millions of dollars. A longer-term suspension could also threaten installation contracts needed to build or complete the projects.
The Interior’s press release said the pause will give the government “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.”
Under federal regulations, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore wind development, has the authority to suspend a lease under two circumstances: “when necessary to comply with judicial decrees prohibiting some or all activities under your lease”; or “when the suspension is necessary for reasons of national security or defense.”
The statute states, “Activities may not be conducted on your lease or grant during the period of a suspension except as expressly authorized under the terms of the lease or grant suspension.” The Interior Department has not made the terms of the suspensions known as of Monday morning.
The federal government cited national security in its stop-work order this summer against Revolution Wind. A federal judge overruled it, and the project, which is almost finished, was allowed to resume construction.
In the statement, Burgum said the freeze “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.”
Per Interior, public reports have “long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference” that “obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.”
Groups opposed to offshore wind development have been highlighting national security as an issue over this last year. This summer, three Republican congressmen, in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, urged the Department of Justice to conduct a review of offshore wind projects for national security threats.
One group, ACK for Whales, based in Nantucket and suing the government over a wind project, said it was “very pleased” with the announcement and had “long cited the very real threat from radar interference caused by these enormous offshore wind turbines.
“Not only does this pose a danger to fisherman [sic] and others on the water, but this obviously also poses a massive national security threat,” Val Oliver, the organization’s president, wrote.
Anti-wind Facebook groups’ posts have asked followers to write to Burgum about national security threats, providing his office’s email and phone number. And offshore wind opposition group Green Oceans this summer commissioned a report that lays out a blueprint for the federal government to cancel offshore wind leases. Among several reasons, it lists national security interference.
The report states the Department of Defense can provide information to inform decisions “regarding lease cancellation on national security grounds.”
The suspension announcement comes two business days after a federal judge issued a final judgment Thursday following her earlier order striking down Trump’s day-one wind memo.
Notably, the judge’s order only applies to the permitting portion of the wind memo, stating federal agencies must make permit decisions within a reasonable time. It does not make any determination on project leasing.
Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, thinks the timing of Monday’s action is no accident, coming just days after the judge’s ruling.
“We do anticipate that at least some of the developers and states are likely to try to get right into court to enjoin any attempt to pause the projects. The fact that they’re premising it on allegedly classified security reports may make it a bit more complicated,” she said.
But Daly said the developers and states may have a strong legal case for overturning the latest pause.
“There was a national security review conducted under the Biden administration, a robust one. These vague assertions of newly identified security risks. … seem likely to be found to be as pretextual as they seem to be,” she said.
The Interior Department cited a 2024 report from a Department of Energy working group to mitigate the effects of wind turbines on radar. The 42-page document, submitted to Congress, is the work product of the Departments of Defense and Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration, NOAA and BOEM.
BOEM routinely works with other agencies, including the Department of Defense, in a yearslong process to evaluate and approve the siting of leases and final construction plans.
“I am not aware of a single instance in which BOEM did not follow a Department of Defense recommendation,” said a former Interior Department employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The notion that now, years later, radar is being flagged as an issue and was not fully vetted during the prior project approvals is “ludicrous,” the former employee said.
“Offshore wind has been installed and spinning for over 30 years. Every other country has managed to do it in a way that is consistent with their national security,” the former Interior employee said. “How is it possible we’re the only country that can’t manage this?”
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has previously undertaken research and review for the federal government regarding offshore wind development and radar. In 2022, a committee released an 82-page report on how wind arrays can interfere with vessel radar.
The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups, celebrated Monday’s suspensions: “Impacts to radar has been a concern for RODA’s members for years! Navigational safety for fishermen and national security cannot be compromised.”
Still, fishing vessels have been navigating the wind farms, and research was set to get underway early next year on how fishing boats behave in them.
The Light has contacted Interior and BOEM for more information on what the suspension means for projects. In a response, Interior provided a link to the press release.
Among several questions, The Light asked the agencies why the national security concerns are not being applied to South Fork Wind, a 12-turbine project in the same area as the other leases that has been operational and sending power since late 2023.
David Schoetz, a spokesperson for Equinor, which is developing Empire Wind off the New York coast, said in an email that the company is “aware of the stop work order announced by the Department of Interior” and added, “We are evaluating the order and seeking further information from the federal government.”
Dominion Energy in a statement said its Virginia wind project is “essential for American national security and meeting Virginia’s dramatically growing energy needs… Stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, AI, and civilian assets. It will also lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs.”
Dominion Energy said it worked in close coordination with the military, and that the project’s two pilot turbines have been operating for five years without any impacts to national security.
Daly said Monday’s action sets a “really dangerous precedent” for any future energy projects in the country.
“If [the Trump administration] can do this to offshore wind, they ought to think about what a future administration might try to do with respect to other kinds of energy that they don’t like,” she said.
The developers of Vineyard Wind, Revolution Wind, and Sunrise Wind did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This is a developing story.
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org
How is it that multiple European nations and China have figured this out and we can’t even get one off the ground? Yes, offshore wind relies on foreign technology, but why would any American company invest in developing technology the government is actively hostile towards?
RADAR interference? Are you kidding me? China’s popping up windfarms all over the south sea, which is probably their most strategically important waters.
We cannot achieve energy independence on fossil fuels alone, but instead of expanding our energy portfolio to include renewables *at scale*, Trump and his GOP continue their campaign to isolate America and let the world pass us by.