{"id":200894,"date":"2025-09-05T00:19:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200894\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T00:19:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:19:16","slug":"orsted-sues-feds-for-stopping-revolution-wind-project-that-will-serve-rhode-island-and-connecticut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200894\/","title":{"rendered":"Orsted sues feds for stopping Revolution Wind project that will serve Rhode Island and Connecticut"},"content":{"rendered":"

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) \u2014 Connecticut, Rhode Island and the developer of an offshore wind farm that would power 350,000 homes in the two states said Thursday that they\u2019re suing the Trump administration for stopping the nearly completed project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha accused President Donald Trump of waging an \u201call-out assault\u201d on the wind energy industry. The states\u2019 lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, describes the Revolution Wind project as a \u201ccornerstone\u201d of their clean energy future, abruptly halted by federal officials without \u201cstatutory authority, regulatory justification or factual basis.\u201d <\/p>\n

Danish energy company Orsted filed a separate suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., also arguing that the administration lacks the legal authority to block the Revolution Wind project. Orsted said it would seek a preliminary injunction that would allow it to move forward with the project, which is 80% complete, with all underwater foundations and 45 of 65 turbines installed.<\/p>\n

Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said Thursday that the department doesn\u2019t comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n

Work on the project was paused<\/a> Aug. 22 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a stop work order for what it said were national security concerns. It did not specify those concerns.<\/p>\n

Trump has been hostile to renewable energy<\/a>, particularly offshore wind, and prioritizes fossil fuels for electricity<\/a>. Revolution Wind is the second major wind project that his administration ordered to stop work. The first, an offshore wind project<\/a> for New York, was later allowed to resume<\/a> construction. <\/p>\n

In separate recent federal court filings, the administration said it was reconsidering approvals for three other wind farms: the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, SouthCoast Wind and New England Wind. Combined, those projects could power nearly 2.5 million homes in Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island with clean electricity. <\/p>\n

Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said Trump and his Cabinet \u201cneed to end their war on American energy and jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Swarm drone attacks\u2019 cited as a reason for stopping work<\/p>\n

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told CNN that he\u2019s concerned offshore wind turbines distort radar detection systems, which could give cover to a bad actor to \u201claunch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold called that a \u201cspecious and false narrative\u201d pushed by someone with an \u201coveractive imagination in search of a solution to a problem that doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d Lippold was commanding the USS Cole when al-Qaida attacked it in a Yemeni port in 2000.<\/p>\n

If drones get that close to U.S. shores to be near a wind farm without being detected by the military, he said, \u201cwe have had a massive intelligence \u2014 a national security \u2014 failure.\u201d <\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and national security expert, has also disputed the administration\u2019s rationale<\/a>, pointing to the Defense Department\u2019s involvement in reviewing the project. <\/p>\n

When it approved Revolution Wind in 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it consulted with the Defense Department at each stage of the regulatory process for the lease area assigned to the wind farm. The DOD concluded that with some site-specific stipulations, any impacts to its training and activities in the wind energy area would be \u201cnegligible and avoidable,\u201d according to the record of decision. <\/p>\n

The state and federal reviews took about nine years. <\/p>\n

Trump and several Cabinet members repeatedly slammed wind power as ugly and expensive during last week\u2019s Cabinet meeting. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talked about the failure of a massive wind turbine blade at a different offshore wind farm under construction off Nantucket, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Fiberglass fragments of a blade from the Vineyard Wind project broke apart and began washing ashore last summer during the peak of tourist season. Manufacturer GE Vernova agreed to pay $10.5 million in a settlement<\/a> to compensate island businesses that suffered losses due to the blade failure. <\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s family famously opposed an earlier failed wind project not far from the family\u2019s Cape Cod estate.<\/p>\n

Trump said, \u201cWe\u2019re not allowing any windmills to go up unless there\u2019s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wind farm was on track to deliver power in 2026<\/p>\n

Revolution Wind was expected to be Rhode Island\u2019s and Connecticut\u2019s first large offshore wind farm, capable of providing about 2.5% of the region\u2019s electricity needs. <\/p>\n

Orsted began construction in 2024 about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of the Rhode Island coast. It says in its complaint that about $5 billion has been spent or committed, and it expects more than $1 billion in costs if the project is canceled. Rhode Island is already home to one offshore wind farm, the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm.<\/p>\n

Rhode Island and Connecticut have said that halting construction of Revolution Wind would harm the states, their residents, investments and the offshore wind industry. More than 1,000 people have been working on the wind farm, and Connecticut committed over $200 million to redevelop State Pier in New London to support the industry.<\/p>\n

The states said they\u2019re counting on the electricity from Revolution Wind, particularly in the winter, when demand in New England spikes and natural gas is prioritized for heating. The power would cost 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, locked in for 20 years. That\u2019s cheaper than the average projected cost of energy in New England.<\/p>\n

The head of Connecticut\u2019s top environmental and energy agency, Katie Dykes, predicts it will cost the state\u2019s electricity ratepayers tens of millions of dollars if the wind project doesn\u2019t come online. She also noted the risk to electricity reliability in New England cited by the region\u2019s independent system operator.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at ap.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) \u2014 Connecticut, Rhode Island and the developer of an offshore wind farm that would power…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":200895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[10106,2738,356,84,69,98171,111158,324,10102,109989,57,59,89447,111159,336,362,564,2739,8006,8132,14944,405,50,111157,80,2737,15010,25731,61,67,370,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-200894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-climate-and-environment","10":"tag-connecticut","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-district-of-columbia","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-doug-burgum","15":"tag-elizabeth-peace","16":"tag-elizabeth-warren","17":"tag-energy-industry","18":"tag-ge-vernova","19":"tag-general-news","20":"tag-inc","21":"tag-jack-reed","22":"tag-katie-dykes","23":"tag-lawsuits","24":"tag-legal-proceedings","25":"tag-maryland","26":"tag-massachusetts","27":"tag-md-state-wire","28":"tag-military-and-defense","29":"tag-national-security","30":"tag-new-york","31":"tag-news","32":"tag-peter-neronha","33":"tag-politics","34":"tag-rhode-island","35":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","36":"tag-u-s-department-of-defense","37":"tag-u-s-news","38":"tag-united-states","39":"tag-united-states-government","40":"tag-unitedstates","41":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}