Trump Administration Targets Fourth Offshore Wind Project for Remand
In what is clearly emerging as a new tactic to derail the offshore wind energy sector, the Department of Justice filed for the fourth time in just a matter of days, asking a District Court to remand the prior approval of the Construction and Operations Plan of a proposed offshore wind farm. The latest target is New England Wind and is drawing angry criticism from environmentalists and elected officials.
The Department of Justice filed a memorandum in support of the long-running case between an environmental group, Ack For Whales, which has been suing the Department of Commerce and Avangrid, the developer of a project known as New England Wind. In the now common tactic, DOJ asks the District Court for the District of Columbia to remand the approval of the Construction and Operations Plan back to the Department of the Interior so that it can reconsider the approval under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
It writes in the memorandum that the approval, which was announced on July 1, 2024, “did not properly consider or explain how the COP ‘provides for’ the subsection’s identified factors.” It is the fourth time DOJ has used a similar tactic to target the permits for wind farms. It took the same approach to challenge the largely completed Revolution Wind project, which should complete commissioning by the end of this year, and then to challenge a series of projects that had gained approvals under the Biden administration but have not commenced construction.
New England Wind is proposed by Avangrid, which is a division of Spain’s Iberdrola. It was proposed for a position approximately 20 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and about 24 nautical miles southwest of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in the same area as the now operating Vineyard Wind and near Revolution Wind. The lease dates from an April 2015 auction, but was assigned in 2021, and the project would straddle two areas. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced its approval of the COP on July 1, 2024, encompassing the two phases of the project, which combined would have a total capacity of up to 2,600 MW. The approval encompassed up to 129 wind turbines and up to five offshore export cables.
“Ooops, they did it again,” commented Pasha Feinberg, offshore wind strategist at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). In a statement, the group highlighted that the administration has tried unsuccessfully to halt the under-construction projects and then resorted to buying back leases in exchange for investments in fossil fuel projects.
“It's long past time for the Trump administration to realize its war on clean energy is backfiring,” said Feinberg. “Customers’ electricity bills keep rising, and our nation can’t meet its growing electricity demands because of these actions.”
The latest tactic, however, is going after projects that sit in the mid-zone between approval and starting construction. Last week, the DOJ filed, asking the court to also remand the COP approval for the Maryland Offshore Wind project being developed by US Wind. Like New England Wind, the project has been in the courts fighting since it gained approval in 2024.
The administration also filed for a remand for the Atlantic Shores project that was proposed off New Jersey. Unlike New England and Maryland, the developer of this project had previously said it was suspended. The investors included Shell, which has since withdrawn from offshore wind investments, and EDF Renewables.
An angry Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island told Politico today the moves by the administration are undermining a bipartisan agreement that the White House had appeared to support. He told Politico, “This is how you blow up a permitting deal.”
Whitehouse was the lead negotiator for a Senate permitting bill to overhaul the country’s approval process for major infrastructure projects. A long-sought goal of Republicans, the Democrats got on board with a compromise to ease permitting for transmission projects. It also includes changes to the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, all sought by the Republicans. One of the conditions of the bipartisan agreement was that the administration stop its attacks on existing renewable projects.
The reforms had been expected to pass when the Senate reconvenes after the current recess for the midterm elections. Politico reports the White House says it maintains support for permitting reform, but it is widely believed the recent DOJ actions have likely killed support for the compromise.
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Avangrid has not commented publicly on the actions by DOJ, and its lawyers have continued to argue the case in court. Maryland Wind had previously asked its judge to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the remand, but the judge said action would have to wait until and if the DOJ took the action to remain the COP.
In addition to these two cases, the courts also have a series of challenges from the states regarding the lease buybacks. The administration lost its previous efforts to delay indefinitely the review of applications for renewable energy projects and its attempt at imposing stop-work orders on the five offshore wind farms that were already under construction.
