Updated Jan. 23
Officials behind the $4.5 billion Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project kept their heads down last year, silently installing turbines 15 miles off the coast of the Island.
They made a point of not attracting any attention, good or bad. And that seemed to work for a majority of the year, as other projects under the microscope became targets of the Trump administration in his war on the industry. But that all changed last month.
And now, in the latest turn of the legal saga for offshore wind, the developers of Vineyard Wind 1 announced last Thursday that they issued a legal challenge against the federal government over a suspension order that has paused construction on the project for almost a month already. A federal judge was scheduled to hear the case on Friday. It was reassigned to another judge Wednesday and is not yet rescheduled.
The company announced that it filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, which would allow construction to resume as litigation continues, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, to stand against the suspension issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on Dec. 22. A similar tactic was used by the four other suspended projects, and has already proven successful. The pause is attributed to publicly undisclosed national security concerns identified in classified reports by the Department of Defense (DoD), which the administration now refers to as the Department of War (DoW).
The matter was scheduled to be heard in Boston on Friday, Jan. 23, at 11 am, but court documents filed Jan. 21 said that the motion hearing was cancelled. As of Jan. 22, the case was reassigned to Judge Brian E. Murphy. A scheduling conference is set for Friday, Jan. 23 at 2:00 p.m. to find a time for the motion hearing.
In court documents, Vineyard Wind 1 LLC said the Interior, BOEM, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement were “abusing their authority” in their issuance of the suspension. They said the project is 95 percent complete, and already has the capacity to produce 572 megawatts.
The project, which started construction in 2021, is planned to have a 806-megawatt capacity, or nameplate production potential, which is the amount of energy produced under optimal conditions (all turbines spin constantly at optimal wind speeds). A 2020 construction and operations (COP) plan (pg. 7) for the project said the wind turbine generators have an annual capacity factor that exceeds 45 percent, which is the ratio of the project’s annual power production to the nameplate production potential, as previously reported by the New Bedford Light.
“As of Dec. 21, 2025, the date before BOEM’s order, the project was on schedule to be completed by March 31, 2026, bringing the project to its planned 800 [megawatts] capacity from 62 wind turbine generators,” the company’s complaint reads.
The suspension also delays benefits promised to the Island through a community benefits agreement (CBA) with the nonprofit Vineyard Power. Part of the CBA is the resiliency and affordability plan (RAP), which allocates $7.5 million to the Island over 15 years for onshore energy projects. Funds, which will be paid in installments of $500,000 to the Island on an annual basis, from the project won’t start until right after the project reaches commercial operation, which was expected to occur at the end of 2025, and now remains undetermined.
Vineyard Wind 1 was the only project of the five to be allowed to continue to produce power amid the suspension and despite national security concerns, though there’s been no new construction permitted for almost a month now. “In addition, given that this project is partially generating power, you may continue any activities from those wind turbines that are necessary for the current level of power generation,” the suspension order said.
The developers referenced their work over the past decade to get federal approvals, and said that federal agencies even defended the legality of the permits and authorizations against four lawsuits over the past couple of years. But they said that attitude changed last January when Trump came to office.
After the suspension order was issued, Vineyard Wind’s CEO Klaus Skoust Møller emailed Matthew Giacona, acting director of BOEM, who issued the suspension, to ask to meet in order to mitigate the national security concerns cited in the order. “Director Giacona and other officials from BOEM and Interior agreed to meet with Vineyard Wind on Dec. 30, but they refused to either identify the supposed national-security threat posed by the project or discuss possible mitigation measures,” court documents said.
And not only is national security hard to fight, but the developers don’t know what the concerns are, and might not ever know. Jacob Tyner, deputy assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management within the Interior, submitted to the court a declaration for a lawsuit by another suspended offshore wind project that said, “BOEM is coordinating with DoW on whether access to the classified material with a secret designation by developers is possible, and/or whether certain information can be declassified, or an unclassified summary could be created.”
Vineyard Wind 1 LLC asked the court to set aside the order as “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law” in court documents filed last Thursday. “Upon information and belief, the order’s invocation of ‘national security’ is a pretext for halting offshore wind development, rather than a response to any identified, project-specific threat,” court documents said. They added that the suspension means they incur costs of $2 million per day, and said they risk access to a specialized installation vessel that is only under contract until March 31.
“The inability to timely complete construction of the project in turn jeopardizes the revenues and financing necessary for the project to remain viable, with resulting financial consequences that would threaten the financial viability of the entire project and, consequently, Vineyard Wind’s ability to survive,” court documents said.
The suspension order suggests permanent cancellation of the project as a possibility, but if construction doesn’t finish soon, the developers suggest the end might come anyway.
“Vineyard Wind continues to work with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and other relevant stakeholders and authorities in the administration to understand the matters raised in the order,” a statement from the company said. “However, Vineyard Wind believes the order violates applicable law and, if not promptly enjoined, will lead to immediate and irreparable harm to the project, and to the communities who will benefit from this critical source of new power for the New England region.”
South of Martha’s Vineyard
Revolution Wind, also off the coast of the Island, Empire Offshore Wind, a New York project, and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project were all granted preliminary injunctions in the past two weeks. Empire Offshore Wind was granted the injunction in the U.S. District Court for D.C. the same day Vineyard Wind filed for its own.
“Empire Wind will now focus on safely restarting construction activities that were halted during the suspension period. In addition, the project will continue to engage with the U.S. government to ensure the safe, secure, and responsible execution of its operations,” a statement from that developer reads.
Editor’s note: This story was updated from last week to include further details from court documents. It was also updated Thursday, Jan. 22 after the motion hearing was cancelled, and the case was reassigned to a new judge.
Will removing them lower our electric rates?
As I read it, there’s nothing new here. This is a routine legal filing dressed up as news.
The stop-work order was issued over national security concerns. Those concerns remain undisclosed, unexamined, and unanswered. This article doesn’t address them. It repeats claims of economic harm and points to injunctions, which are procedural pauses — not findings that anything is safe or resolved.
We’ve seen this cycle already. File suit, get an injunction, keep building, move on. Until the actual concerns are addressed, this adds very little.
national security concerns…
Wind mills are ugly…
What are the concerns?
I agree with Murray when he says “The stop-work order was issued over national security concerns. Those concerns remain undisclosed, unexamined, and unanswered..” There is only one reason for that– the government hasn’t made a case — If you want to win a court case, you have to disclose what the problem is. A judge would throw a case out if you accused your neighbor of robbing you but refused to say when , where, what was stolen, and if there is any evidence. These constant stop orders are just wasting taxpayer money in legal fees, not allowing us to reap the benefits of nearly completed and desperately needed cheap and clean energy, and not allowing U.S workers to earn a living. “National security” seems to be the new “dog whistle” for some groups of people. Just say the word, and nothing else matters. What Pavlov learned applies directly to conditioned humans. You can be opposed to these because someone somewhere else has taken all the risk, invested all the money and might make a profit,, they are ugly, or any of an array of other issues, but this is not about “national security”.
Albert, Don —
The article may have been updated, but the underlying issue remains the same.
I see it this way: the stop-work order still rests on “national security concerns” that have not been described, evaluated, or tested in public. What is well established — and acknowledged by federal agencies for years — is that large offshore wind installations can, under certain conditions, interfere with certain radar and sensing systems. That point is not new, and it has never been the real dispute.
The unresolved question has always been whether mitigation is adequate. This lawsuit doesn’t answer that. Injunctions are procedural tools. They pause enforcement while courts review authority and process; they are not findings that risks have been resolved.
We’ve already seen this sequence. National security is cited. Details are withheld. Developers file suit. Courts grant injunctions. Construction continues. The legal posture shifts, but the factual record does not.
That’s why the same question keeps being asked. The government won’t explain the concern. Developers insist it’s manageable. And the rest of us are left revisiting the same ground, as if repetition might somehow produce details that still haven’t been offered.
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