A federal judge has allowed work to restart on the Revolution Wind offshore wind project, cancelling out the Trump administration’s stop order issued in August.
The project, located off the coast of Rhode Island, was ordered late last month to “halt all ongoing activities” by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), pending a review to address unspecified concerns raised by the Department of Interior.
BOEM acting director Matthew Giacona said that the government was halting the project to “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States”. The Danish firm was also told it “may not resume activities” until the Bureau has completed a review of the project.
The construction of the project, which is being developed by the Danish wind giant Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, started in 2023, and at the time of the BOEM order, the project was about 80% complete, with 45 of its 65 turbines already installed.
Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables filed a lawsuit in the DC District Court earlier this month to reverse a stop-work order for the project.
On Monday, Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted a motion for preliminary injunction of the stop-work order imposed by the Trump administration. The judge said that there was no question in his mind of “irreparable harm to the plaintiff”. Work on the project will now restart.
The judge also stated that the Department of Interior did not provide “any factual findings” to claim that the project was a national security concern, or any other concern which required an immediate halt to construction and called the actions of BOEM “arbitrary and capricious”.
Revolution Wind has said that it already spent or committed about $5bn on the project and will incur more than $1bn in costs if the project is cancelled.
The developer stated that it would resume construction “as soon as possible” and that it would continue working collaboratively with the US administration and other stakeholders toward a prompt resolution.
