A federal judge ruled this on Monday offshore wind project aimed at powering 600,000 homes in New York, construction can resume, the fifth project to get back on track after the disaster. Trump administration she quit in December.
In clearing the way for Sunrise Wind, Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the government had not shown that offshore wind energy poses such a grave threat to national security that it must be halted in the United States.
President Donald Trump has said his goal is not to have any “windmills” built often talks about his hatred of wind energy. His administration five major offshore wind projects frozen on the East Coast, days before Christmas, citing national security concerns. Developers and states have filed a lawsuit to block the order. White House spokesman Taylor Rogers has repeatedly said during the legal battle over the pause that Trump has made it clear that “wind energy is the scam of the century” and that the pause is intended to protect the national security of the American people.
Sunrise Wind said work would resume as soon as possible. New York State and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued the Trump administration about shutting down Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind because she said the pause threatens New York’s economy and energy grid.
Other federal judges allowed construction to restart in January Empire Wind project for New York from the Norwegian company Equinor, Virginia coastal wind offshore for Virginia by Dominion Energy Virginia, and Vineyard wind for Massachusetts by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
Hillary Bright, executive director of offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward, cited the industry’s victories in court, saying the government should stop blocking such projects.
“At a time when electricity demand is rising rapidly and grid reliability is increasingly stressed, these projects represent critically needed utility-scale energy resources that are making progress toward completion,” Bright said. She estimated that the projects together would generate 6 gigawatts of electricity, powering 2.5 million American homes and businesses.
Sunrise Wind is approximately 45% complete and is expected to be operational in 2027. Sunrise Wind LLC said in court papers that the shutdown order was costing the project at least $1.25 million per day, a figure that would rise in February if construction could not resume. It was also said that if the work stoppage continued beyond the first week of February, it could lead to cancellation.
The government had argued that national security concerns outweighed any harm a pause would cause to developers. It says it is relying on new classified information, provided by defense officials in November, about the national security implications of offshore wind energy projects.
Trump has developments in the field of offshore wind energy were rejected equally ugly, but Orsted says the Sunrise Wind project will be at least 30 miles east of Montauk Point on Long Island, virtually unnoticeable from Long Island. Sunrise Wind will be able to generate 924 megawatts, enough clean energy to power approximately 600,000 homes in New York.
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