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Connecticut, Rhode Island and Ørsted have sued the Trump administration for halting the Revolution Wind project, citing unfounded national security concerns.
The project, nearly complete and set to power 350,000 homes, was stopped due to fears of drone attacks, a rationale dismissed by experts.
The lawsuit claims the halt order lacks legal basis and threatens clean energy progress.
Connecticut, Rhode Island and the Danish energy company Orsted have filed lawsuits against the Donald Trump administration after federal officials abruptly halted the nearly completed Revolution Wind project, which was due to power 350,000 homes across the two states, reported the news agency Associated Press (AP).
The United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a stop work order on August 22, 2022 citing unspecified national security concerns.
Later, Doug Burgum, Interior Secretary under Trump, told CNN that the resason behind halting the Revolution Wind project was fear of a “swarm drone attack”, since the offshore wind turbines distort radar detection systems. This logic has been rubbished by security experts, including retired Navy commander Kirk Lippold, who called it a “specious and false narrative” pushed by someone with an “overactive imaginaton in search of a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist”.
It'll be a “massive intelligence — a national security — failure” if drones can fly that close to wind farms, he was quoted as saying by AP.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island also rejected the rationale, noting that the Department of Defense had signed off on the project after nearly a decade of state and federal reviews.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha accused President Donald Trump of mounting an “all-out assault” on the wind energy sector. The lawsuit, lodged in the US District Court in Rhode Island, described the offshore wind farm as a “cornerstone” of the states’ clean energy future, halted without “statutory authority, regulatory justification or factual basis”.
Ørsted filed a separate suit in Washington, DC, also arguing the administration lacked the legal authority to stop the project. The company said it would seek a preliminary injunction to allow construction to resume. Work on Revolution Wind, which began 2024, is 80 per cent complete, with all underwater foundations and 45 of its 65 turbines already installed. It could begin delivering electricity from 2026.
The company noted in the complaint that it has spent or committed around $5 billion has been spent or committed, and would have to shell out $1 billion more if the project is shelved.
Trump has long opposed renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, and has prioritised fossil fuels. His administration has now stopped work on two major wind projects, including a New York development that was later allowed to restart, and is reconsidering approvals for three others that together could supply power to 2.5 million homes across Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. At a recent Cabinet meeting, Trump and his team called wind power facilities ugly and costly.
Some 1,000 people were employed for the project. The states argued that halting the project will damage their economies, undermine electricity reliability in the larger New England region, and leave ratepayers with tens of millions of dollars in additional costs.