The Interior Department is pausing leases for five offshore wind farms on national security grounds, including one in Virginia that is close to being finished.
“ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a post on X on Monday, adding that the offshore wind projects subject to a pause are “expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized.”
The affected projects are Vineyard Wind 1 in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind in Rhode Island, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1 in New York and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind in Virginia, Reuters reported.
Construction on the Virginia project, developed by Dominion Energy, is more than halfway done. The wind farm was on track to start supplying power by the end of 2026 to up to 660,000 homes in Virginia, according to the project’s website, and has seen support from several Virginia Republicans including Rep. Jen Kiggans and Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
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“I have been working with the Department of the Interior and Governor Youngkin for months to safeguard Virginia’s Coastal Offshore Wind Project, and I am deeply disappointed by this news. This new directive will negatively affect Hampton Roads, thousands of workers, and the amount of energy that can be produced. It will also undermine military readiness,” Kiggans said in a statement. “I am anxiously awaiting answers from the administration regarding this directive.”
The Department of Defense “conclusively” found the five wind farms cause radar interference, Burgum said during an appearance on Fox Business on Monday morning.
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to NOTUS’ questions about the specifics of that study. An Interior Department spokesperson directed NOTUS to a press release that said wind turbine blades and towers create radar interference that “obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.”
The Trump administration has previously attempted to pause or dismantle several of the wind projects that were part of Burgum’s Monday announcement. The Interior Department placed a stop-work order on Revolution Wind in August, but a federal judge lifted that order in September. The administration also placed a stop-work order on Empire Wind in April but lifted it in May after reportedly meeting with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
But the announcement is the first direct attempt to dismantle the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. Lawmakers told NOTUS earlier this year they were hopeful the administration would not target that project because it was far along in the construction process.
Opponents of offshore wind have often cited national security concerns when arguing against wind farm development. A Government Accountability Office report this year found that “turbines could also affect radar system performance,” though the report did not identify specific cases of wind farms causing radar interference and also said that “early coordination between [Bureau of Ocean Energy Management] and the Department of Defense (DOD) has resulted in avoiding defense-critical areas” when developing offshore wind.
Renewable energy industry leaders raised alarms about the announcement.
“Offshore wind is great at meeting winter peak loads in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, so federal blockage of utility resource plans harms reliability,” Grid Strategies President Rob Gramlich said in a statement to NOTUS about the pause on the Virginia project. “This is the opposite of permitting reform.”
Ted Kelly, the director for U.S. Clean Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, called the move “unlawful.”
“The already-built portion of Vineyard Wind saved New Englanders $2 million per day in energy costs during the recent cold snap,” Kelly said in a statement. “The administration’s unlawful action today means thousands of energy workers will be told their jobs are at risk three days before Christmas.”
A federal judge also ruled this month that the administration’s sweeping January directive to stop issuing new wind leases and reevaluate existing ones was unlawful, but did not preclude the administration from taking other steps to interfere with wind development.
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