The US District Court for the District of Columbia has granted a preliminary injunction allowing construction activities to resume on Equinor’s Empire Wind project.
On January 2, Equinor’s Empire Offshore Wind LLC, a company developing the Empire Wind project off Long Island, filed a civil suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
It challenged the US Department of the Interior’s December 22, 2025, decision to stop the project. As part of the case, the company sought a preliminary injunction to allow construction to continue.
Now that the preliminary injunction is in place, Equinor will focus on safely restarting construction activities that were halted during the suspension period. Also, the project will continue to “engage with the US government to ensure the safe, secure, and responsible execution of its operations”.
Empire Wind is being developed under contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to deliver a new, near-term source of electricity for New York and bolster grid reliability at a time of rapidly growing demand.
The project is currently over 60% complete and represents a significant investment of over $4bn, $2.7bn of which has been drawn under the project financing. At the end of September 2025, the project had a gross book value of around $3.1bn, including the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
Once completed, the project would provide enough power to electrify approximately 500,000 homes in New York.
Equinor has previously warned that the project was “days away” from cancellation due to the massive financial implications of stopping it. Termination losses could have included $4bn already invested, $850m in termination fees with 11 construction contracts, and $355m to dismantle the existing project assets.
The Interior halted five offshore wind projects under construction – Vineyard Wind 1, Revolution Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Sunrise Wind, and Empire Wind 1.
The projects are worth over $10bn in combined investment and have enough capacity to power over two million homes. So far, Revolution Wind and Empire Wind have been given permits to restart construction.
