A federal judge ruled again Monday that work may resume on the offshore Revolution Wind project, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to halt construction for the second time.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said in a ruling from the bench Monday that evidence provided by the federal government — which cited the potential impacts large wind farms can have on military radar — was not sufficient to justify its decision to suddenly stop work on a project that was years in the making and had undergone extensive reviews by defense officials and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. BOEM gave its final approval to the project in 2023.
“While the Bureau may order a suspension of operations for legitimate reasons of national security… those suspensions are limited to emergency situations and demonstrated findings of particularized harm that cannot be averted short of a total stop to project activity,” Lamberth said.
Lamberth, who was appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan, further pointed out that officials said they were made aware of newly-classified information regarding wind projects in November but they didn’t act on that information until Dec. 22 — three days before Christmas.
“I’m not persuaded that any such emergency exists in this case,” he said.
Lamberth’s ruling only applies to Revolution Wind and not the four other offshore wind projects that saw their development halted as result of the Trump administration’s stop-work order. That order included Revolution’s Wind’s sister project, Sunrise Wind.
Even with Monday’s victory, Revolution Wind’s developers are facing a time crunch to complete the nearly $6 billion wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.
Revolution Wind was already 87% completed when work was halted — for the second time — in late December. All but seven of of the massive turbines have been mounted on top of pilings driven into the sea floor, and transmission cables have been laid to connect the project to onshore substations, according to court filings.
But the developers also face a deadline of Feb. 22 — 41 days away — to complete work on the seven remaining turbines before a specially-designed installation vessel, the Wind Scylla, has to depart for other projects.
That work will take at least 41 days to complete, according to Revolution Wind’s attorneys.
“Revolution Wind will determine how best it may be possible to work with the US Administration to achieve an expeditious and durable resolution,” project spokeswoman Meaghan Wims said in a statement Monday. “The Project will resume construction work as soon as possible, with safety as the top priority, and to deliver affordable, reliable power to the Northeast.”
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers released a statement responding to Monday’s decision deriding offshore projects as the “scam of the century.”
“For years, Americans have been forced to pay billions more for the least reliable source of energy,” Rogers said. “The Trump administration paused the construction of all large-scale offshore wind projects because our number one priority is to put America First and protect the national security of the American people. We look forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”
President Donald Trump is a vociferous opponent of wind energy who has repeatedly spread false and misleading claims about turbines, including that they kill whales and cause cancer in humans. In August, his administration halted work on Revolution Wind for about a month before Judge Lamberth lifted its earlier order.
In explaining that earlier decision, Lamberth chastised government officials for failing to provide any evidence to support its claims about national security concerns. The first stop-work order, he said, was “the height of arbitrary and capricious action.”
This time, he said the government provided some evidence in a classified setting to support its claims. However, he said that evidence was similar to issues that were previously investigated during permitting for Revolution Wind, and it was not enough to justify shutting down the project as it neared the end of construction.
The Department of Interior’s announcement last month that it was pausing work on on those projects along the East Coast cited both classified and unclassified reports on a type of radar interference known as “clutter” that the agency attributed to the movement of turbine blades.
A spokesperson for Interior did not respond to a subsequent request from the Connecticut Mirror to provide copies of those unclassified reports. Attorneys for both Revolution Wind and the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island said that the government also declined to provide its findings to officials with the proper security clearances, include Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The Trump administration did submit some of its classified information from Department of Defense for Lamberth to review, along with a declaration from Interior Deputy Secretary Jacob Tyner raising concerns about foreign entities involved in Revolution Wind. The project’s developers, Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, are based in Denmark and Germany, respectively.
Ultimately, Lamberth said he was not moved by the information he had seen and had reason to doubt the veracity of the government’s arguments.
For example, he cited Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum’s own appearances on television discussing the stop-work order, in which the secretary railed against the offshore wind projects for their costs and other “reasons unrelated to national security.”
Lamberth’s ruling was quickly hailed by officials in both Connecticut and Rhode Island, where Revolution Wind is due to begin providing hundreds of megawatts of power to electric customers later this year. More than 1,000 workers are employed by the project, including at its staging facility on New London’s State Pier.
“This project should have never been shut down the first time or second time by the White House,” Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement Monday. “Federal interference has stood in the way of lower energy costs and good-paying jobs, but today’s ruling puts Revolution Wind back on track. With construction resuming and suppliers gaining certainty as we near completion, this state-backed project will help deliver a more diverse energy supply and lower utility costs for families and businesses.”
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and his counterpart in Rhode Island also filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration’s latest stop-work order. That case was consolidated with the lawsuit brought by Revolution Wind’s developers ahead of Monday’s hearing.
“This project is on the finish line to begin delivering clean, affordable energy to Connecticut families,” Tong said in a statement. “With yet another clear defeat, it is my hope that Donald Trump will drop his lawless and erratic attacks for good. We’re prepared to keep fighting — and winning — for as long as it takes to protect Connecticut ratepayers, workers and our environment.”
Supporters of renewable energy and other climate-conscious groups also jumped in to praise Lamberth’s decision.
“Today’s ruling is a decisive win for energy reliability and the hundreds of thousands of families counting on Revolution Wind,” said Kat Burnham, a senior principal at Advanced Energy United, a industry group representing renewable and distributed energy developers.
“The court rightly saw through a politically motivated stop-work order that would have caused real harm: driving up costs, delaying power for Rhode Island and Connecticut, and putting good-paying jobs at risk. It’s good news for workers, ratepayers, and anyone who recognizes the need for a fair energy market,” Burnham added.
Some Republicans in Connecticut had also begun to question the Trump administration’s treatment of Revolution Wind.
Last week, House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Brandford, and Senate GOP leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, sent a joint letter to Secretary Burgum requesting that the government expedite its review of the national security concerns, citing estimates that the loss of the project could cost New England electricity customers up to $500 million a year.
“Say what you want about wind, solar, or any other renewable energy, I think these things should be visited in the prospective, not retroactively,” Candelora said. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
Candelora said he had not received a response to his letter as on Monday.