By JENNIFER McDERMOTT and MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has moved to block a Massachusetts offshore wind farm, its latest effort to hobble an industry and technology that President Donald Trump has attacked as “ugly” and unreliable compared to fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, filed a motion in federal court Thursday seeking to take back its approval of the SouthCoast Wind project’s “construction and operations plan.” The plan is the last major federal permit the project needs before it can start putting turbines in the water.
SouthCoast Wind, to be built in federal waters about 23 miles south of Nantucket, is expected to construct as many as 141 turbines to power about 840,000 homes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The Interior Department action is the latest by the Trump administration in what critics call an “all-out assault” on the wind energy industry.
Trump’s administration has stopped construction on major offshore wind farms, revoked wind energy permits and paused permitting, canceled plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development and stopped $679 million in federal funding for a dozen offshore wind projects.
The moves are a complete reversal from the Biden administration, which approved construction of 11 large offshore wind projects to generate enough clean energy to power more than 6 million homes. The projects now face uncertain futures under Trump.
Last week, the Interior Department asked a federal judge in Baltimore to cancel a previous approval by BOEM to build an offshore wind project in Maryland. The ocean agency has concluded that its prior weighing of the project’s impacts was “deficient” and intends to reconsider that analysis to make a new decision, the department said.
Developer U.S. Wind has not yet begun construction, but plans for the Maryland Offshore Wind Project call for up to 114 turbines to power more than 718,000 homes.
BOEM had approved SouthCoast’s operations plan on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Trump’s second term began.
“Based on its review to date, BOEM has determined that the COP approval may not have fully complied with the law” and “may have failed to account for all the impacts that the SouthCoast Wind Project may cause,” Interior said in its legal filing. The agency asked a federal judge to allow reconsideration of the project.
In a statement, developer Ocean Winds said the company “intends to vigorously defend our permits in federal court.”
“Stable permitting for American infrastructure projects should be of top concern for anyone who wants to see continued investment in the United States,” the statement said.
Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups, said Trump “is threatening good jobs while he pursues his senseless vendetta against offshore wind.”
Pulling energy project permits and canceling lease sales isn’t new. Biden revoked the permit to build the long-disputed Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office, halting construction. He canceled scheduled oil and gas lease sales.
But Trump’s efforts to dismantle the offshore wind industry are much more extensive than the way Biden targeted fossil fuels, said Kristoffer Svendsen, assistant dean for energy law at the George Washington University Law School. He thinks offshore wind developers will now see the U.S. as too risky.
“They have plenty of options. They can invest in Europe and Asia. There are good markets to invest in offshore wind. It’s just the U.S. is not a good market to invest in,” he said.
The Trump administration has stopped construction on two major offshore wind farms, so far. One of them, the Empire Wind project for New York, was allowed to resume construction. The Revolution Wind project for Rhode Island and Connecticut is paused, and both the developer and the two states sued in federal courts.
The Danish energy company Orsted is building Revolution Wind. The Danish government owns a majority stake in the company.
Besides SouthCoast, the Trump administration has said it is reconsidering approvals for another wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, New England Wind. It previously revoked a permit for the Atlantic Shores project in New Jersey.
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