By Kennedy Maize
President Donald Trump’s long list of offshore wind defeats is growing. Vineyard Wind 1 on March 13 installed the final of 62 13-MW wind turbines some 15 miles off of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. It is the first major offshore wind project to come to completion in the Trump administration.
Trump has long trumpeted his ire against wind, vowing in a September cabinet meeting, “We don’t allow windmills. We’re not allowing any windmills to go up.” His hatred of wind power goes back 20 years to a dispute in Scotland over his development of a new seaside golf course, which he eventually lost. 
Vineyard Wind 1 was one of five the administration tried to stop through a late December Interior Department order to stop construction on five projects. Within months, federal courts overturned the order.
Vineyard Wind 1 has been sending power to the New England grid for over a year. The $3 billion, 804-MW project began construction in November, 2021. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Iberdrola, through a subsidiary of Avangrid Renewables, jointly own the project.
It was scheduled to be completed last year, but Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, at Trump’s order, put a hold on the work, along with four other East Coast wind projects, claiming a never revealed “national security” issue related to possible interference with military radars.
Eventually, four judges in five different federal courts overturned the stop work orders, in each case citing the administration’s failure to follow the venerable Administrative Procedures Act in issuing the construction halts.
As Vineyard Wind was finishing construction, Revolution Wind off the Rhode Island and Massachusetts coasts announced it had begun delivering power to the New England grid. The $6 billion project, owned by Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, began construction in 2023.
Work continues on three other previously stalled offshore projects:
- Sunrise Wind, another Ørsted project, is an 84-turbine, 924-MW wind farm under construction off New York’s Montauk Point and Martha’s Vineyard, with power to be delivered to the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority. Its cost is an estimated $7 billion. Construction began in 2024, with the project planned for completion in 2027. Sunrise is the only project that plans to use high-voltage, direct-current technology to move power from the site to shore.
- Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the largest offshore wind farm now under development, plans 176 wind turbines producing an estimated 2.6 GW of power at a projected cost to owner Virginia-based Dominion Energy of some $10.7 billion. The project is more than 80% complete. The project was initially protected by then Republican governor and Trump sycophant Glenn Youngin. When Democrat Abigail Spanberger took over the Governor’s mansion late last year, it showed up on Burgum’s list.
- Empire Wind, another New York project, long championed by Trump nemesis Gov. Kathy Hochul. Located in the New York Bight off New York and New Jersey and owned by Norway’s Equinor. The project has two phases — Empire1 and Empire 2, with a total cost of some $9 billion. The first 816-MW phase is about 70% complete, with a finish date of 2027. Construction began in 2024. Trump tried to kill the project in April 2025, not long after taking office. At his direction, Burgum ordered construction to stop, citing a faked order from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Trump backed off when his administration was unable to produce the alleged NOAA study and Hochul threatened to kill a gas pipeline Trump was supporting.
Licking its wounds from the beating administered by the federal courts, the White House appears to have abandoned the advice of Gen. Arbitrary and Dr. Capricious and is employing a new approach to stymieing the wind: commerce.
The New York Times reported yesterday (Mar. 17), “Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.”
According to Utility Dive, France-based Total bought the North Carolina offshore lease for $160 million and the New York lease for $795 million, both in 2022. Interior will offer $928 million, or $27 million less than Total paid. Total presumably expects to profit from the investment, so it may be difficult for the company to find any art in this deal.
The administration is threatening to cancel the leases if Total doesn’t bite. That would likely set off another round of litigation.
John Leshy, Interior’s general counsel in the Clinton administration, told the Times, “It is quite unusual for the administration to do this cash outlay, seemingly just because Trump doesn’t like offshore wind.”
Trump’s ingrained, irrational antipathy toward wind has done his administration and the American people no good. It’s time for the White House to acknowledge the wisdom of the great American philosopher, 84-year-old Robert Zimmerman, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
