Updated September 4, 2025 at 3:32 PM EDT
Less than two weeks after the Trump administration issued a stop-work order for Revolution Wind — a large and nearly complete wind farm off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island — the company behind the project, is pushing back.
Ørsted, one of the largest offshore wind developers in the world, sued the administration in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday. In its complaint, the company called the stop work order “unlawful,” claiming it “lacks any evidentiary basis” and was issued “without statutory authority.”
The company also asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would invalidate the stop-work order as the lawsuit moves through the judicial system.
Ørsted declined an interview request, but said in a statement that the company “will continue to seek to work collaboratively with the Administration and other stakeholders toward a prompt resolution.” Still, the statement continued, “the project is facing substantial harm from continuation of the stop-work order, and as a result, litigation is a necessary step.”
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the agency does not comment on pending litigation
Several advocates for wind energy applauded the company’s move.
“We didn’t believe these actions taken by the president were lawful, and I’m really glad to see Ørsted pushing back heavily,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center, a clean energy research and advocacy nonprofit. “Hopefully this lawsuit will prevail.”
Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, also said the stop-work order was “a violation of the law and a dramatic overreach” by the Trump administration. She wrote in an email that “the courts may provide developers the fastest resolution to the administration’s harmful and unlawful decisions.”
Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project, was slated to deliver 704 megawatts of power to Rhode Island and Connecticut starting next year — approximately enough electricity to power 350,000 homes. The project received final federal permits in 2023 and has been assembling the wind farms components at a newly revitalized port in New London, Connecticut.
With 45 turbines installed and most of the two off-shore substations complete, the $4 billion wind farm was about 80% finished when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued the stop-work order in August.
In that 2-page order, Matthew Giacona, BOEM’s acting director, said the agency “is seeking to address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.”
The order provided no further specifics, but speaking a few days later on CNN, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum described the possibility that a wind farm could scramble radar, providing cover for an underwater drone attack. However, as Ørsted pointed out in its complaint, the Department of Defense previously signed off on the project.
“Over the course of many years, Revolution Wind and federal regulators, including Defendants, have undertaken an extensive environmental, national defense, and safety review covering every conceivable aspect of the Project’s development and construction,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “This review, spanning three Presidential administrations, culminated nearly two years ago in a consensus decision of 15 federal and state agencies that the Project is both safe and consistent with federal and state law.”
Also on Thursday, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha filed a separate federal lawsuit against the Trump administration for halting work on Revolution Wind.
“The Revolution Wind project supports over 2,500 jobs nationwide in the construction, operations, shipbuilding and manufacturing sectors, including over 1,000 union construction jobs,” they wrote in a joint statement. “The project has been vetted and approved through every layer of the federal and state regulatory process and is supported by binding contracts and legal mandates.”
Beyond jobs, many states in the region are banking on offshore wind to help meet their targets for slashing climate-warming emissions and keeping the lights on. Electricity demand is expected to start rising in New England as early as this year, and ISO New England, the regional grid operator, has said it’s counting on Revolution Wind to generate power.
“It is included in our analyses of near-term and future grid reliability,” ISO New England said in a statement last month responding to the stop-work order. “Delaying the project will increase risks to reliability.”
Since taking office in January, President Trump has worked to make good on a campaign promise to “end” the offshore wind industry. He stopped all leasing and permitting activities on the first day of his second term, and directed the Interior Department to review all existing permits. In April, the administration halted work on a different wind project off New York, Empire Wind, though that order was revoked several weeks later following negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul.
More recently, the administration has canceled $679 million for offshore wind port projects, including $34 million for a specialized staging pier in Salem. In court documents, the administration has indicated it intends to revoke permits for two other projects near Massachusetts: New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind. New England Wind is fully permitted and SouthCoast Wind has nearly all of its permits.
Speaking to Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey slammed the Trump administration for attacking offshore wind.
“ One thing we don’t need is energy supply to our region cut off,” she said. “And unfortunately, that’s what we’re seeing by the Trump administration’s move to kill jobs and to literally take away power by dismantling wind operations on the East coast.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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