A US federal judge has ruled that the final halted offshore wind project could resume work. This is the fifth such court win against Donald Trump’s crusade against offshore wind.
Ørsted’s project off New York’s Long Island, Sunrise Wind, was allowed to resume work halted by the federal government.
This meant that union workers on all five under-construction offshore wind projects in the United States could return to work.
The projects have been in limbo since December, when the Trump administration issued stop-work orders on all offshore wind projects being built in federal waters – Revolution Wind in Rhode Island and Connecticut, Empire Wind in New York, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project in Virginia, Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, and Sunrise Wind in New York.
In response, each of the project’s developers filed a lawsuit challenging the orders, and all have now received a preliminary injunction allowing construction to proceed. Sunrise Wind filed the lawsuit in mid-January after the Danish firm initially filed a lawsuit for Revolution Wind, a 50/50 joint venture between Skyborn Renewables and Ørsted.
According to Ørsted, the project is nearly 45% complete. It has installed 44 of 84 monopile foundations and the offshore converter station. Construction of the onshore electric infrastructure is substantially complete, and near-shore export cables have been installed. At the time of the lease suspension order, the project was expected to begin generating power as soon as October 2026.
Sunrise Wind is designed to deliver power to nearly 600,000 homes once fully operational in 2027 under a 25-year contract with the State of New York.
In total, all five projects are worth over $10bn in combined investment and have enough capacity to power over 2.4m homes.
“Today’s ruling lifting the stop-work order is a return to sanity after yet another attempt at disruption by the federal government to stop the offshore wind industry. Sunrise Wind can now move forward delivering good union jobs, grid reliability, and real progress that Long Island cannot afford to lose,” said John Durso, president of the Long Island Federation of Labor.
