Trump Halts 5 Wind Farms Off the East Coast

The Interior Department said the projects posed national security risks, without providing details. The decision imperils billions of dollars of investments.

The Trump administration on Monday said it would pause leases for five wind farms under construction off the east coast, essentially gutting the country’s nascent offshore wind industry in a sharp escalation of President Trump’s crusade against the renewable energy source.

The decision injected uncertainty into $25 billion worth of projects that were expected to power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses across the Eastern United States, according to Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy group. The five wind farms were projected together to create together about 10,000 jobs.

The move left intact just two operational wind farms in U.S. coastal waters — one small project off Rhode Island that began running in 2016 and a larger project off New York that has been fully operational since 2023.

The five wind farms targeted on Monday had obtained leases from the Biden administration. Citing unspecified national security concerns, the Trump administration said it would freeze those leases, effectively blocking construction or operations and jeopardizing billions of dollars that had already been invested.

One project, Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts, is already partly running, with about half of the project’s 62 turbines sending power to the electric grid.

In announcing the pause, Doug Burgum, the secretary of the interior, said in a statement that “the prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people.” He said the decision addressed emerging national security risks as well as “vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our East Coast population centers.”

In a letter to the wind farm developers, Matthew Giacona, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, declined to explain the national security concern but wrote that the danger posed by the projects could be averted only by suspending them.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly called offshore wind turbines ugly, costly and inefficient. He has disparaged the clean energy source ever since, 14 years ago, he failed to stop an offshore wind farm visible from of one of his golf courses in Scotland.

In addition to Vineyard Wind 1, other projects affected by the pause are Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind off New York, and Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut.

The abrupt announcement left the wind farm builders sputtering.

David Schoetz, a spokesman for Equinor, the developer of Empire Wind, said the company was reviewing the stop-work order and seeking more information from the government.

Jeremy Slayton, a spokesman for Dominion Energy, which is building the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, called it “essential for American national security and meeting Virginia’s dramatically growing energy needs.”

Mr. Slayton argued that stopping the project for any length of time would threaten grid reliability “for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, A.I. and civilian assets.”

He also dismissed the administration’s national security concerns, saying the wind farm was developed “in close coordination with the military.” The project’s two pilot turbines had been operating for five years without causing any impacts to national security, he said.

“We stand ready to do what is necessary to get these vital electrons flowing as quickly as possible,” Mr. Slayton said.

Orsted, the Danish energy giant that is building Sunrise Wind and Revolution Wind, said it was weighing its options, including discussions with the Trump administration “as well as the evaluation of legal proceedings.”

The Interior Department said that the Pentagon had produced classified reports that found the wind farms posed national security risks and that an unclassified report from the Energy Department had found that wind farms could interfere with radar systems.

Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind had escaped attention from the Trump administration for months, in part because of strong support from Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Republican of Virginia. But its fate became uncertain after Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat, won the Virginia governor’s race in November to succeed Mr. Youngkin.

In New York, Empire Wind has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Trump administration. In April the Interior Department ordered that construction on Empire Wind be stopped, pushing the $5 billion project to the brink of collapse. After several weeks and negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, the administration allowed the project to proceed, at least until now.

White House officials suggested they had relented only after Ms. Hochul agreed to approve new gas pipelines in the state, although the governor denied that any such deal had been made.

New York’s lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, who is challenging Ms. Hochul in next year’s Democratic primary, said on social media on Monday: “Hochul got played. She sold out New Yorkers by fast tracking Trump’s fracked gas pipeline, thinking Trump would fund wind projects here in NY. There is no deal making with someone like Trump.”

Representatives for Ms. Hochul did not respond to Mr. Delgado’s remarks. At a news conference on Monday, the governor lamented the impact of the pause. “Labor unions who very likely support the president are now having their holiday ruined because they’re now going to be losing their jobs,” she said.

Mayor John Mitchell of New Bedford, Mass., a hub for the Vineyard Wind 1 project, said local officials were scrambling to understand the Trump administration’s order, but believed it could require “shutting down an operating power plant in the middle of the ocean.” The wind farm was expected to power nearly 200,000 homes this winter when its final turbines were connected.

“It has the immediate effect, as far as we can tell, of throwing people who were working on our waterfront out of work three days before Christmas,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The financial consequences for the companies behind the five offshore wind farms could be dire. When work on Empire Wind was initially paused in April, Equinor said it was losing $50 million a week.

Delays to Revolution Wind were estimated to cost its developer, Orsted, approximately $15 million per week. In October, Orsted said it would cut about 2,000 jobs, or around 25 percent of its work force, over the next two years — a decision fueled by the Trump administration’s actions as well as tariffs, high inflation and interest rates.

Offshore wind farms are generally expensive to build because they require specialized equipment and economies of scale are difficult to achieve.

But at a moment when affordability has become a national concern, the five paused projects were largely expected to save consumers money on their electric bills, since many of the developers had locked in contracts with utilities to purchase the power at lower prices.

At the same time, electricity demand is spiking, partly because of the growth of data centers, and power companies are struggling to keep up. “It is very hard to square this with the rising demand that so much of the government and industry is scrambling to address,” said Seth Kaplan, a vice president at Grid Strategies, a consulting firm.

On the first day of his second presidential term, Mr. Trump issued an executive order halting all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. His administration has since gone after wind farms that had received permits from the Biden administration and were either under construction or about to start operation, using shifting explanations.

The administration’s approach has suffered some legal setbacks. A federal judge this month struck down the halt on leasing mandated by the January order, saying it was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated federal law.

Attorney General William Tong of Connecticut, a Democrat, said in a statement that the new order to pause Revolution Wind was “even more lawless and erratic” than the first.

“We went to court over this before,” Mr. Tong said, noting that a court order was in place blocking the administration’s previous attempt to stop the wind farm. “Every day this project is stalled is another day of lost work, another day of unaffordable energy costs and other day burning fossil fuels when American-made clean energy is within reach,” he said.

Executives in the offshore wind industry called the administration’s move on Monday harmful to the U.S. economy.

“America’s offshore energy industry has put thousands of Americans to work in high-paying jobs in the construction of offshore projects that will effectively meet burgeoning demand for power throughout the Northeast,” said Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore oil drilling firms and offshore wind developers.

Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who retired from the U.S. Navy in 2007, disputed the Trump administration’s claim that offshore wind projects threaten national security. He noted that all five projects halted on Monday had undergone rigorous reviews, including by the Defense Department.

“Ironically, these projects will actually benefit our national security by diversifying America’s energy supplies, providing much-needed reliable power for the grid and helping our economy,” Mr. Lippold said.

Benjamin Oreskes contributed reporting from New York.

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