The developer behind a large offshore wind farm near Massachusetts will try to convince a federal judge on Tuesday to allow construction on the project to resume.
Attorneys for the company, Vineyard Wind, will ask the judge to hit pause on a federal order that stopped work on the nearly complete project. The Trump administration suspended work on Vineyard Wind and four other offshore wind projects last month, citing unspecified national security concerns.
In a subsequent lawsuit, Vineyard Wind accused the government of acting unlawfully and of abusing its statutory power — a move the company said is costing it $2 million for each day that construction is shut down.
Tuesday’s hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston comes amid mounting public outrage over the region’s high energy costs, and concerns about how New England will handle the projected growth in electricity demand over the next decade. The hearing also comes after judges allowed construction to resume — at least temporarily — on three other East Coast offshore wind projects that were similarly shut down by last month’s federal order.
Given the outcome of those cases, Timothy Fox, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm that tracks offshore wind projects, said Vineyard Wind stands a good shot at getting its temporary restraining order, too.
“The arguments raised by Vineyard Wind that allege violations of two federal laws and the U.S. Constitution align closely with the claims that successfully led three other judges to overturn the Trump Administration’s suspension of offshore wind projects,” Fox wrote in an email.
While the outcome of the hearing is far from certain, Vineyard Wind officials have argued that time is of the essence.
If the stop-work order remains in place, “Vineyard Wind will suffer immediate and irreparable harm, threatening the entire Project and Vineyard Wind’s ability to survive,” Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller said in court documents. “At this point, even a few days of further delay could materially jeopardize the Project.”
The company said crews must get back to work by Jan. 30, at the latest, in order to finish the project before its contract ends with a specialized boat required to assemble turbines at sea. If the temporary injunction isn’t granted, and the boat departs at the end of March, Vineyard Wind will be forced to “leave partially completed turbine assets stranded in the Atlantic Ocean in an unsafe condition,” Moeller said.
At the time of the construction freeze, crews working on Vineyard Wind 1 had installed 61 of the 62 wind turbines, and were in the midst of replacing a handful of potentially faulty blades, following a blade failure in July 2024. Most of the wind farm’s turbines – 44 in total – are already generating electricity for the New England grid. The company said in court documents that it was on track to be fully operational by the end of March. At that point, the 800 megawatt project would be capable of producing enough renewable electricity to power 400,000 homes.
“New England is counting on offshore wind as a major new source of energy, particularly for its reliability benefits during winter when the region’s power supply is constrained,” wrote Elizabeth Mahony, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, in a declaration submitted to the court in support of Vineyard Wind’s lawsuit. “At present, there is no alternative utility-scale electric generation project proposed in New England that is able to construct and come online in the same timeframe.”
Vineyard Wind will also argue in court that it risks severe financial harm because its financing for the $4.5 billion project depends on meeting specific operational deadlines.
At the heart of the lawsuit is a question about whether the Trump administration’s construction freeze was arbitrary and capricious, as the developer alleges, or critical for national security, as the administration will argue in court.
In the December order, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency within the U.S. Interior Department that oversees offshore energy development, said it was suspending work on the project after receiving new classified information from the Defense Department.
“This information included, among other things, discussion of the rapid evolution of relevant adversarial technologies and the direct impacts to national security that arise from the operation of offshore wind projects in proximity to early warning monitoring systems, and military and civilian radar systems,” Acting Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Matthew Giacona wrote in court documents.
It’s long been known that spinning offshore wind turbines can interfere with radar and create what’s known as “clutter,” but technology can mitigate the issue.
The Defense Department plays a big role in vetting offshore wind proposals, and determining whether there are ways to work around this radar issue, said Howard David Belote, the former executive director of the Department of Defense’s Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse — the office that oversees work to evaluate whether energy projects will impact homeland security.
Belote was hired by Vineyard Wind to provide expert testimony and said in a court filing that the Defense Department would not have signed off on the project if it thought it posed a problem.
“Given the rigorous and time-consuming process for researching, selecting, and conditioning offshore wind turbines, any appreciable national security risk these projects may post would have already been flagged and addressed before construction work began,” he wrote.
All five of the projects suspended last month received the greenlight from the Defense Department before beginning construction.
Vineyard Wind also noted in its complaint that federal officials have “refused to either identify the supposed national-security threat posed by the Project or discuss possible mitigation measures.”
In fact, the company argued the order halting construction is simply “a pretext for halting offshore wind development, rather than a response to any identified, Project-specific threats.”
Since taking office one year ago, President Trump has relentlessly attacked offshore wind projects. He and other administration officials have claimed turbines are ugly, unreliable and harmful to marine life.
In at least one other lawsuit, a federal judge questioned the administration’s sincerity in claiming the pause stemmed from national security concerns. When that judge granted a preliminary injunction for Revolution Wind earlier this month, he said he found it worrisome that some Trump administration officials slammed offshore wind for non-security reasons in the press.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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