department of Interior

US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

Department of Defense, department of Interior, green, offshore wind, Policy, renewable energy, Science, Trump, Wind / Shannon Garcia / December 22, 2025

On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the Interior is blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

The second Trump administration announced its animosity toward offshore wind power literally on day one, issuing an executive order on inauguration day that called for a temporary halt to issuing permits for new projects pending a re-evaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that executive order, noting that the government has shown no indication that it was even attempting to start the re-evaluation it said was needed.

But a number of projects have gone through the entire permitting process, and construction has started. Before today, the administration had attempted to stop these in an erratic, halting manner. Empire Wind, an 800 MW farm being built off New York, was stopped by the Department of the Interior, which alleged that it had been rushed through permitting. That hold was lifted following lobbying and negotiations by New York and the project developer Orsted, and the Department of the Interior never revealed why it changed its mind. When the Interior Department blocked a second Orsted project, Revolution Wind offshore of southern New England, the company took the government to court and won a ruling that let it continue construction.

US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified Read More »

Trump admin lifts hold on offshore wind farm, doesn’t explain why

On Monday, however, the company announced that the hold had been lifted and construction would resume. But as with the hold itself, the reasons for its end remain mysterious. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management page for the project was only updated with a new letter on Tuesday. That letter indicates a review of its approval is ongoing, but construction can resume during the review.

The Department of the Interior has not addressed the change and has not responded to a request for comment. A post by Interior Secretary Burgum doesn’t mention Empire Wind but does suggest the governor of New York will approve a pipeline: “I am encouraged by Governor Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity.”

That suggests there was a deal that allowed Empire Wind to resume construction in return for a pipeline for fossil fuels. The New York Times suggests that this is a reference to the proposed Constitution Pipeline, which was planned to move natural gas from Pennsylvania to eastern New York but was cancelled in 2020 due to state opposition.

But Governor Kathy Hochul has not made any comments about a willingness to move forward on any pipelines. Instead, Hochul’s statement on Empire Wind is very vague, saying that she “reaffirmed that New York will work with the Administration and private entities on new energy projects that meet the legal requirements under New York law.”

So while it’s good news that construction on Empire Wind has restarted, the whole process has been problematic, driven by apparently arbitrary decisions that the government has refused to justify.