“National security.”
That’s the flimsy, unsubstantiated excuse cited by the U.S. Department of the Interior this week when it paused work on five domestic offshore wind development projects, including Dominion’s Coastal Virginia turbine farm located 27 miles off the Virginia Beach coast.
Hampton Roads has been a hub for the U.S. armed forces throughout its history. Our region is home to about 90,000 active-duty service members, some of the nation’s most important installations and hundreds of billions in military hardware.
But the Trump administration wants the public to believe that now — more than 12 years since the offshore wind project first secured its lease — new concerns about national security warrant stopping construction of a project that is only months away from completion.
This is lunacy. It is an indefensible, destructive decision that must be reversed at once.
Dominion Energy first reached agreement with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for an offshore lease with the intent of exploring the possibility of developing a wind energy project for the commonwealth. Ambitious in size and scope, it envisioned a farm of 127 turbines, ultimately generating 2.6-gigawatts — energy sufficient to power up to 660,000 homes.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project was perfectly suited to the commonwealth’s power outlook. No place on the East Coast is more threatened by rising seas and climate change than Hampton Roads, and moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels and toward a green energy future serves our environmental needs.
What’s more, our regional economy has long needed greater diversity from an overreliance on federal defense spending, tourism and hospitality services, and commerce through the Port of Virginia. Developing an economic sector for renewable energy — wind and solar, primarily — would position Hampton Roads for an area of high demand.
The business and education communities rallied to the cause, often hand-in-hand. Our higher education institutions developed programs to train workers to build and repair turbines and manage the project; businesses opened that would build and supply parts or to attend to host of related constitution needs.
A two-turbine pilot project began operations in 2020. Its success opened the door for further progress. Dominion reports that, though the cost has ballooned due to tariffs and inflation to more than $11 billion, it remained on schedule to be fully up and running by the end of next year.
All of that was put in jeopardy on Monday when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced it would pause the CVOW and four other offshore wind projects, citing a classified report that concludes the projects could compromise national security. Burgum did not explain why the Interior Department, rather the Defense Department, made the announcement if it was based on security concerns.
That’s probably because it’s an empty and baseless excuse. President Donald Trump’s hatred of wind power predates his time in public office, and his return to the White House has emboldened him to pursue every avenue to thwart the development of renewable energy.
In January he issued an executive order halting most federal permits for wind projects still under development, though the CVOW was spared because it was so advanced. A federal judge blocked that order this month, prompting the administration to now claim “national security” warrants a pause.
Virginia’s project wouldn’t have reached this stage without years of careful study and buy-in from national defense interests located here in Hampton Roads. For the Trump administration to announce now, at the 11th hour, that it must be halted is administrative malfeasance that will cause lasting harm across the commonwealth, from our burgeoning renewable power industry to the very military installations that the White House purports to be protecting with its unsubstantiated worries about “radar interference.”
This cannot be allowed to stand. Every Virginia official, especially those who represent this region in Washington, should exhaust themselves working to make the administration see reason and allow this project to continue.
Anything less would be an unfathomable setback to the region and our future.