The Trump administration has ordered a pause on all large-scale offshore wind projects currently under construction in the United States, citing national security concerns identified in classified government reports.
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In a statement released Monday, the Department of the Interior said it is suspending leases for “all large-scale offshore wind projects under construction” after “national security risks” were identified in “recently completed classified reports.”
The decision affects five major offshore wind developments located in federal waters along the East Coast: the 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project; the 800-MW Vineyard Wind 1 offshore Massachusetts; the 700-MW Revolution Wind offshore Rhode Island; and New York’s 2-GW Empire Wind and 924-MW Sunrise Wind projects.
Interior officials said the pause will allow the agency, the Department of Defense and “other relevant government agencies” time to work with developers and state partners “to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the concerns stem from “the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.”
According to the department, turbine infrastructure may interfere with defense systems. The release stated that “massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers” can cause radar interference that “obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.”
Burgum also suggested broader energy policy considerations played a role in the administration’s move. In a post on X, he wrote, “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED,” calling offshore wind “expensive, unreliable,” and “heavily subsidized.”
President Donald Trump is “bringing common sense back to energy policy & putting security FIRST!,” Burgum added.
Developers moved quickly to respond. In a statement issued Monday, Dominion Energy, which owns and is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, said the project is “essential for American national security and meeting Virginia’s dramatically growing energy needs, the fastest growth in America.”
The company said that demand growth “is driven by the need to provide reliable power to many of America’s most important war fighting installations, the world’s largest warship manufacturer, and the largest concentration of data centers on the planet as well as the leading edge of the AI revolution.”
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is expected to reach full commercial operation in late 2026.
Other affected projects remain at various stages of construction. Vineyard Wind 1, a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid, is scheduled to come online in mid-2026 following earlier delays. Revolution Wind, developed by Ørsted and Global Infrastructure Partners, is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026 after previously facing a stop-work order under the Trump administration. Sunrise Wind, owned by Ørsted, and Empire Wind, owned by Equinor, are both slated to begin operations in 2027.
The federal pause also comes as legal scrutiny continues. In 2024, a coalition of conservative groups filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior over the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. In a joint filing submitted Wednesday, the parties said that “DOI plans to conduct a review in which it will consider if [a lease] remand would be appropriate” and asked that the case be stayed until Feb. 2.
The filing noted that Dominion Energy consented to the stay but did not “concede the propriety” of any review or remand of the project’s lease.
Originally reported by Diana Digangi, Reporter in Construction Dive.
