Trump admin finds yet another way to attack offshore wind

The Trump administration is widening its attacks on U.S. offshore wind development, this time by siding with anti-wind groups that are seeking to strip projects of existing federal approvals.

Its latest target is New England Wind, a 2-gigawatt development proposed off the coast of Massachusetts. On Tuesday, the Justice Department asked a federal court to remand, or send back, a key construction permit, saying the Interior Department’s prior approval does not adequately explain how the project complies with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

The filing comes less than two weeks after the administration sought permission to reconsider permits for Revolution Wind — a 704-megawatt wind farm that is already generating power off the coasts of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Interior also recently requested to take another look at Maryland Offshore Wind, a 1.7-GW project proposed near Ocean City, Maryland. 

The actions are part of larger legal proceedings brought by offshore wind opponents, with ACK for Whales challenging New England Wind, Green Oceans going after Revolution Wind, and the Town of Ocean City fighting Maryland Offshore Wind. The administration is essentially saying it agrees with their complaints against the federal government and wants to reopen the approval process — and potentially arrive at a different decision — for projects that have already been cleared.

President Donald Trump, who has long fixated on blocking offshore wind, has worked repeatedly to undermine the fledgling U.S. industry since starting his second term in January 2025. His administration has forced in-progress developments to pause construction, paid private energy companies to abandon offshore wind leases, and eliminated key tax credits for offshore wind development.

“This is part of a pattern of activity to try to prevent the buildout of offshore wind, that is energy that the U.S. people desperately need,” Pasha Feinberg, an offshore wind strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the latest tactic. 

The Trump administration’s efforts will undoubtedly make it harder for future administrations to gain the trust of offshore wind companies, which can spend billions of dollars and take nearly a decade to develop projects. But the unusual maneuver of revisiting federal permits could undermine all types of large infrastructure projects going forward, experts say.

“Whether it’s transmission lines, whether it’s offshore or onshore infrastructure, it can create vast uncertainty as to already approved and operational projects,” said Tony Irish, senior counsel at the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who previously served as an Interior Department lawyer before leaving in 2025.

Along with this month’s filings, the administration has already moved to reevaluate two other proposed offshore wind farms. On Sept. 30, Interior confirmed that it is reviewing approvals for the planned Atlantic Shores facility near New Jersey, after a judge gave the go-ahead in August. The agency began revisiting permits for the SouthCoast Wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts late last year.

The most recent permit-review requests come as Congress is pushing to pass a bipartisan permitting bill that would make it easier to build new energy infrastructure and includes ​“project certainty” language to prevent future projects from being arbitrarily canceled — a provision critics say could benefit fossil fuels but in theory would help offshore wind development as well.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of the deal’s architects, said the administration’s latest attacks on offshore wind threaten to jeopardize those negotiations. ​“This is how you blow up a permitting deal,” Whitehouse told Politico on Wednesday after the New England Wind filing.

When asked about the timing of its remand requests, a spokesperson for Interior said on Wednesday that the agency is ​“complying with a briefing schedule, not announcing a policy change. Our position has remained consistent throughout this administration and this filing should not be misconstrued as a shift in the Department’s approach to offshore wind.” 

Interior issued the same statement after news of the Revolution Wind filing broke earlier this month.

Revolution Wind and the four proposed projects all underwent extensive, yearslong reviews by state and federal agencies before receiving their final approvals under the Biden administration. Opposition groups have continued to contest those permits, claiming that the offshore wind developments would violate federal laws on issues such as protecting marine life, commercial fisheries, mariner safety, and oceanfront views.

The Town of Ocean City, for instance, accused the federal government of ​“shortcutting the statutory and regulatory requirements” meant to protect the environment and people in approving the Maryland Offshore Wind project. ​“Ocean City has raised these concerns from the start, and we welcome this acknowledgment,” the town said in a statement last week, Maryland Matters reported.

US Wind, the company developing Maryland Offshore Wind, defended its project in response to the Trump administration’s latest effort to stall the project.

“After over a decade of analysis, several federal agencies properly issued final permits to the project, which is one of the largest new energy projects in the region,” Nancy Sopko, US Wind’s vice president of external affairs, said in an emailed statement. ​“We are confident that a court will uphold their validity and prevent any adverse action against them.”