NORFOLK, Virginia — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Interior Department’s order halting construction of an offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia, marking the third time in a week that courts have stepped in to reverse the Trump administration’s anti-wind policies.
Judge Jamar Walker said in a hearing Friday before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the agency failed to provide sufficient reasoning for freezing work on Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. The Biden-appointed judge issued a preliminary injunction from the bench clearing the way for construction to restart while litigation remains ongoing.
The Dec. 22 order from Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management blocked construction on five offshore wind projects for 90 days along the Eastern Seaboard, citing emerging national security concerns. Along with Dominion Energy’s project, the order halted ongoing work on Empire Wind 1, Sunrise Wind, Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind 1.
“Ordinarily a national security risk would weigh heavily in the government’s favor,” said Walker, “but here the evidence does not demonstrate the security risk is so imminent” that a stop-work order is needed.
He noted that while the court does not directly consider harm to Dominion’s customers, the delay in the project would damage Dominion’s reputation.
The preliminary injunction will remain in effect pending further order from the court, Walker said.
Walker’s order came on the heels of a preliminary injunction from a federal district court in Washington on Thursday, allowing construction of Empire Wind to resume off the coast of New York. That order came just days after another judge in the same court ordered work to continue for Revolution Wind, a project located off the coasts of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
A Feb. 2 hearing is scheduled in the D.C. District Court on Sunrise Wind developer Ørsted’s request to continue work on its project off the coast of New York.
Also on Thursday, Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners filed a suit in a federal district court in Massachusetts to challenge the work pause for their joint project, Vineyard Wind 1.
Attorneys for Dominion told Walker in a brief last week that BOEM’s order posed an existential threat to the project if the court did not act quickly. The more than $11 billion project has been fully permitted and under construction since 2024. It is slated to begin generating electricity early this year, and would provide enough energy to serve approximately 660,000 homes.
BOEM’s order has already led to close to $100 million in costs, and will cause weeks of delay for the delivery of energy to the region, including military facilities and data centers, the company told the court in its brief.
James Auslander, who argued on behalf of Dominion, said during Friday’s hearing that BOEM was wrong to issue a one-page order and “that’s the end of it.” Auslander co-chairs the natural resources and project development practice at the law firm Beveridge and Diamond.
He also sharply critiqued BOEM’s decision not to share classified details of its national security concerns with the company.
“We’re flying blind here, your honor,” Auslander said, “because they won’t even tell us what the threat is.”
The Trump administration has claimed that a pause is necessary to address national security concerns raised in a classified November report by the Department of Defense. They cited rapidly evolving “adversary technologies” as a source of the national security threat.
In a brief to the court, Justice Department attorneys claimed Dominion had not shown it would suffer irreparable harm over the course of the litigation to warrant action from the federal court.
Government lawyers have resisted calls from energy companies to share the classified report with individuals at each of the companies who have the appropriate security clearance.
DOJ Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, arguing on behalf of BOEM, acknowledged that companies were arguing their case with “one hand tied behind their back,” but claimed the government had good reason not to share the information.
Woodward also tried to distinguish the government’s position with respect to Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind from its arguments in the other cases in which courts had granted preliminary injunctions.
BOEM’s latest directive to halt offshore wind projects comes after the agency had initially ordered a pause on all new offshore wind approvals at the start of Trump’s second term in office. That order was tossed out last month by a federal district court in Massachusetts.
Reporter Lesley Clark contributed.
