Judge issues favorable ruling for offshore wind

The rights of offshore wind developers and small coastal communities have been debated and discussed within federal courtrooms and the meeting rooms of town halls; this has intensified in recent days as the Trump administration continues its attack on the nascent industry and throws the regulatory environment into uncertainty. 

This week, the administration was dealt its own blow when one federal judge ruled in favor of a development close to completion that will feed power to both Rhode Island and Connecticut and lies just 12 miles from Martha’s Vineyard. Environmentalists and some local politicians see the latest decision as a win for an industry hobbled by President Donald Trump.

And on a more local scale, officials from four Island towns met to discuss how they can hold offshore wind developers more accountable to the Vineyard.

On Friday, representatives including town administrators and select board members from Edgartown, Aquinnah, Chilmark, and West Tisbury met in a rare, inter-municipal closed-door session. Officials have noted concerns with the Island’s only community benefits agreement — between Vineyard Wind and nonprofit Vineyard Power — and questions have lingered on towns’ rights in holding the behemoth of eight other offshore wind projects near the Island to account.

The discussion between Vineyard towns comes in the wake of “productive” negotiations between the town of Nantucket and the developers of the Vineyard Wind 1 project, 15 miles off the coast of the Island, to re-examine their own community agreement. Chilmark decided to engage other towns and gauge interest in collaboration on actions similar to Nantucket’s, which have included legal settlements and demands for increased dialogue and participation.

While officials have yet to publicly discuss the outcome of the meeting, James Hagerty, town administrator for Edgartown, said it was productive, and they plan to meet again in mid-October.

On the federal level, attacks on the renewable energy industry by the administration haven’t ceased since Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20 that withdrew the outer continental shelf from future offshore wind leases, and called for a review of all areas already leased.

In a recent move, the federal government issued a stop-work order in late August, halting construction for the nearly complete and federally permitted Revolution Wind offshore wind project, 12 miles off the coast of Aquinnah.

But a rare win for the industry came Monday when a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia granted a stay and preliminary injunction on the stop-work order, as requested by New England states and the developer. Exactly a month after the stop-work order was enacted, the injunction allows construction to resume on the 65-turbine project.

Revolution Wind is a subsidiary of Ørsted, a Denmark-based energy company, and part of a 50–50 joint venture with the U.S.-based Global Infrastructure Partner’s Skyborn Renewables to construct the offshore wind farm.

“This is a major win for Connecticut workers, and for Connecticut families who need this project on track now, so it can start to drive down our unaffordable energy bills,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong in a press release. “The Trump Administration should see the writing on the wall with this decision, and drop its defense of their indefensible actions.”

In the decision to halt the Revolution Wind project, the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) listed undefined “natural security” concerns. But in early September, in one of the first attempts to repel the administration’s anti-wind rhetoric, the developer argued in a lawsuit that the stop-work order lacked any “evidentiary basis.” Connecticut and Rhode Island officials, who plan to count on 704 megawatts of electricity from the project for an estimated 350,000 homes, also pushed back against the order. The state attorney generals took the federal government to court the same day as the developer. 

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, found that the developer “demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of its underlying claims,” and that the project “is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction.” He granted the stay and injunction Monday.

Environmental advocates called the judge’s decision good news for the wind industry.

Businesses need to rely on regulatory certainty, said Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs for the advocacy group Environmental League of Massachusetts. “Trump is creating a huge amount of regulatory uncertainty, not just within the offshore wind industry, but the whole supply chain that supports it,” she added.

The injunction can be appealed, but, for now, the lawsuit over the stop-work order continues into the evidentiary part of the process, and work can continue on the project, Boyd Rabin said.

“We have this remedy within our court system so that you can’t tie up a business with accusations that are likely to fail,” she said, adding that she thinks this injunction establishes the case that developers have rights, and “courts can do the right thing.”

Congressional representatives praise the judge’s decision. “As offshore wind navigates the uncertainty of the current regulatory environment and various court actions, one thing is clear — the industry is creating jobs, bolstering our local economy, and is an important component of our nation’s energy independent future,” Congressman Bill Keating said in a statement to The Times. He added, though, that it’s hard to know what this injunction could mean for other projects under attack, because the administration hasn’t treated different projects the same ways.

Meanwhile, other projects are still under question. Last week, the Trump administration officially went after a key permit for SouthCoast Wind, a 141-turbine project planned for 26 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard that promises to deliver energy to more than 1 million homes.

A motion filed Sept. 18 said that BOEM seeks a remand of the approval of SouthCoast Wind’s construction and operations plan (COP), a necessary step, and one of the final federal permits required to start construction.

The COP for the project was approved by BOEM on Jan. 17 of this year, just three days before Trump was inaugurated. The plan was originally submitted on Feb. 15, 2021. It took almost four years to receive the approval.

In last Thursday’s motion, BOEM said the agency determined that the COP approval may not have complied with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law from 1953 that allows federal authority over submerged lands in federal waters, and “may have failed to account for all the impacts that the SouthCoast Wind Project may cause.” The document continues, “‘BOEM also found that the Environmental Impact Statement and other record documents may have ‘understated or obfuscated impacts that could have subsequently been improperly weighed in making the determinations’” under the act.

The project already anticipated a years-long delay in construction, due to federal policies and the need to secure power purchase agreements at the state level.