Late last month, the Trump administration halted construction on billions of dollars worth of offshore wind projects after the Defense Department allegedly raised new national security concerns about the facilities. But no one outside the federal government seems to know what sort of threats the administration has found. So far, the government has been unwilling to release that information even to the companies building the projects.
The Interior Department sent stop-work orders on December 22 to the developers of five wind projects off the East Coast. The orders were based on classified reports recently completed by the Defense Department. The Interior Department said pausing construction would give federal agencies time to work with project developers to try to mitigate potential risks.
Companies building infrastructure projects routinely work with the federal government to deal with issues that regulators raise, including around national security. Without information about newly-discovered threats, companies building the wind projects have said in court filings that they can't address the government's concerns. They said the lack of transparency suggests the administration's goal is to block wind projects, rather than to deal with legitimate national security issues.
Dominion Energy, which is building a wind project off the Virginia coast, said in a court filing that the government's unspecified national security concerns are "pretext for this Administration's purely political and irrational campaign against wind energy."
A White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said in a statement that U.S. industries, including the defense sector, "cannot depend on the most expensive and unreliable form of energy." The Interior and Justice departments declined to comment. The Defense Department didn't respond to messages seeking comment.
Blocking offshore wind could drive up power prices by restricting new sources of electricity at a time when demand is expected to soar. Trying to kill federally-permitted projects also risks stifling business investment in the United States, across industries.
"It's a big problem, and it impacts the ability of companies to have confidence to invest in the United States," says Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents the offshore oil, gas and wind industries.
Security claims are the administration's latest move against wind energy
The projects targeted by the stop-work orders are Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts; Revolution Wind offshore Rhode Island; Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind off the coast of New York; and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. All of the wind farms are far along in construction, with Vineyard Wind 95% complete. Together, the projects would generate enough electricity to power more than 2.5 million homes.
The companies have argued that the government's stop-work orders were "arbitrary and capricious," among other alleged violations of federal law. So far, federal judges have ruled that three of the wind farms targeted by the Trump administration — projects off the coasts of Rhode Island, New York and Virginia — can resume construction while their lawsuits against the government continue.
It's not unusual for presidents to intervene in energy markets. The fossil fuel industry has long complained that it's been targeted by Democrats. Former President Joe Biden, for example, revoked a key permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline as part of his administration's efforts to limit climate change.
However, the Trump administration's latest moves seem more extreme than what presidents have done in the past, according to energy analysts and stakeholders.
Trump has railed against wind energy after he lost a fight with an offshore project near one of his golf courses in Scotland more than a decade ago. "My goal is to not let any windmills be built," President Trump said at a recent White House meeting with oil executives.
The stop-work orders that the Interior Department sent out in December are the administration's latest effort to hobble the industry in the U.S.
Over the past year, the government has refused to issue new permits and has cancelled hundreds of millions in federal funding for ports that serve as assembly and staging areas for offshore projects. And over the summer, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directed his staff to examine the impact that offshore wind farms could have on "military readiness." About a month later, in August, the Interior Department tried, unsuccessfully, to stop construction of a wind project off the coast of Rhode Island based on alleged national security concerns.
It's long been known that the spinning turbines of a wind farm can interfere with radar, obscuring legitimate targets and creating the appearance of false ones. But projects face extensive vetting by federal regulators, including military officials. And there are ways to limit the risk. Dominion Energy, for example, which is building the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, agreed to pay for radar upgrades at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). And Sunrise Wind has agreed to curtail operations at NORAD's request.
However, in November, the Defense Department shared new classified information with the Interior Department about security risks surrounding offshore wind, said Matthew Giacona, principal deputy director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in a recent court filing.
It's unclear what the Defense Department found. Giacona said the assessment included "a discussion of the rapid evolution of relevant adversarial technologies and the direct impacts to national security that arise from the construction and operation of offshore wind projects" near early-warning and radar systems.
In a separate court filing that was heavily redacted, Dale Marks, a deputy undersecretary in the Defense Department, said the classified material related to an updated assessment of how offshore wind turbines could interfere with military radar.
The stakes are high for regions slated to get electricity from offshore wind
Companies building the wind farms have said in lawsuits that the government has blocked their efforts to get more information. A week after the Trump administration paused construction, a team from Sunrise Wind, including employees with security clearances, met with BOEM officials to try to resolve the government's concerns, according to the company's lawsuit. However, BOEM failed to arrange a classified briefing, Sunrise Wind said, adding that the government "has taken no real steps" to share details about alleged security risks. Other companies have described similar interactions with the government.
The administration "can't just say 'national security,' file a secret report and call it a day," James Auslander, a lawyer for Dominion, told a federal judge at a hearing on Friday.
A DOJ lawyer, Stanley Woodward, said at the Friday hearing that the department hasn't politicized the process. The DOJ doesn't plan to share classified information with Dominion or Sunrise Wind during litigation, according to court filings.
"It would appear, when you see the sequencing of events, that [the stop-work orders are] more related to an administration agenda that doesn't want to see offshore wind move forward" rather than to national security risks, says Milito of the National Ocean Industries Association.
ISO New England, which manages the electric grid across six northeastern states, has said cancelling or delaying two offshore wind farms in the area would drive up power costs by an unspecified amount and jeopardize electric reliability. And PJM Interconnection, which manages the grid from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, has said Dominion's offshore wind project is a critical source of new electricity.
The stakes are also high for companies that have invested billions into projects that now face an uncertain future.
"It's no secret the president has a personal animus toward wind farms," Auslander, the Dominion lawyer, said at the Friday hearing. Now, he said, Dominion's project is "caught in that net."
WHRO's Katherine Hafner contributed to this report.
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