Federal Judge Allows Revolution Wind Work to Resume
September 22, 2025
Share
Revolution Wind will be allowed to continue to build offshore wind turbines, thanks to a preliminary injunction granted to the company by a federal judge on Monday.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth, first appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Ronald Reagan in 1987, issued a stay on the stop-work order on the project imposed by the federal Department of the Interior on Aug. 22.
“Revolution Wind has demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of its underlying claims, it is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, the balance of the equities is in its favor and maintaining the status quo by granting the injunction is in the public interest,” wrote Lamberth in his order.
Pending the outcome of its lawsuit against the Trump administration, Revolution Wind parent company Ørsted will be allowed to continue construction of its offshore wind project, which the company estimated prior to the stop-work order was 80% complete.
“Revolution Wind will continue to seek to work collaboratively with the U.S. administration and other stakeholders toward a prompt resolution,” Revolution Wind spokesperson Meaghan Wims said in a statement. “Revolution Wind will resume impacted construction work as soon as possible, with safety as a top priority.”
The stop-work order took Ørsted — and Rhode Island officials — by surprise last month after it was issued by the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the agency within the federal Department of the Interior that oversees offshore wind lease areas and production.
The $5 billion, 65-turbine wind project 20 miles off the Rhode Island coast had been on track to supply renewable electricity to Rhode Island and Connecticut by 2027, but the stop-word order presented major disruptions, including the loss of specialized equipment and some union labor.
The Trump administration hasn’t hidden its hostility to offshore wind projects, despite Revolution Wind originally obtaining federal approval from BOEM in early 2020 during the president’s first term.
Revolution Wind, along with the nearby Sunrise Wind and SouthCoast Wind projects, were perceived as relatively safe from federal interference under the second Trump administration. All three projects had their major federal permits already in hand, with the Biden administration issuing its final major permit approval for SouthCoast Wind just days before Trump’s inauguration.
Rhode Island needs the Revolution Wind project if it’s going to meet its renewable energy goals and reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with electricity consumption. Around 18.6% of all emissions produced in R.I. stem from resident and business consumption of electricity, most of which comes from natural gas-fired power plants located outside of the state.
Rhode Island’s Act on Climate law requires the state to reduce its GHG emissions by 45% under 1990 levels by the end of this decade, a benchmark which becomes far more impossible to achieve without a major renewable energy generator supplying electricity to the state.
In a joint press conference with the entire state Congressional delegation and labor leaders held days after the stop-work order was issued, Gov. Dan McKee said the order would endanger union jobs in Rhode Island and threaten a committed source of renewable electricity the state was relying on to meet its energy needs and goals.
“J-O-B-S, jobs,” said McKee at the Aug. 25 press conference. “That’s what at stake in Rhode Island without this project.”
Just last week, on Sept 17, attorneys general from Rhode Island and Connecticut filed a 47-page motion in District Court arguing the project was almost complete, and without a stay the company faced “unsustainabe losses” from the stop-work order.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong had filed their own lawsuit in District Court against the Trump administration over its stop-work order to the Revolution Wind project.
In a release issued Monday, Neronha celebrated the preliminary injunction, saying it was a win for Rhode Island’s workers and families.
“This president cannot cancel clean energy projects just because he believes doing so is politically expedient for him,” Neronha said. “Indeed, the outcome here bodes well for our case in Rhode Island. Judge Lamberth’s decision to grant Ørsted’s motion aligns with our argument that this administration’s attempt to undermine the clean energy industry while eliminating thousands of union jobs is both arbitrary and capricious — in simpler terms, it came without warning, reason, or legal basis.”
Christian Roselund, who leads the Yes to Wind campaign for Climate Action Rhode Island, said Monday, “Trump is not a god, or a king. His administration often issues illegal orders, and they can be stopped. This is a huge win not just for Revolution Wind, but for offshore wind projects up and down the East Coast that are being targeted by Trump.”
CARI leads the state’s Yes to Wind campaign, which is mobilizing Rhode Islanders in defense of offshore wind. Last month, the campaign brought out more than 100 residents to a Newport rally opposing the Revolution Wind stop-work order, and more than 640 people have already signed a growing petition calling for offshore wind to move forward.
Categories
Join the Discussion
View CommentsRecent Comments
Leave a Reply
Your support keeps our reporters on the environmental beat.
Reader support is at the core of our nonprofit news model. Together, we can keep the environment in the headlines.
wind energy is not clean and green, but causes major destruction to the sea bed, sea going mammals, and birds of the air. JOBS means temporary union jobs during construction, and that’s it. temporary while we live with these monsters forever. And they only provide electricity part of the time because wind does not blow consistently unlike a power plant which is 24/7.
Windpower is what is going to make it possible to keep RI moving forward. The fossil fuel interests are criminals bent on killing everyone and the planet. Especially Trump, but also all the anti wind folks who obviously want to boil the planet.
Offshore wind is destructive to the environment, destructive to jobs for Americans, destructive to the economy, and destructive to national security. It has been proven repeatedly that levelizing intermittent and unpredictable wind power output actually uses more coal and natural gas power than without it. There is zero evidence o the contrary. Yet the $billion in subsidies have created a feeding frenzy that obliterates common sense.
Offshore wind developers use extensive measures during work boat transit (e.g, protected species observers; stop-travel orders) and construction (e.g., bubble curtains, etc.). These measures are far, far more extensive than any such measures by fishing boats and commercial vessels (which do the greatest harm to marine mammals). When the turbines are in place and operating, the ocean neighborhood adapts (as it has done off Block Island and off the coasts of Europe and China, which runs a lot of offshore wind farms). The winds above the North Atlantic, where Revolution is located, are some of the strongest anywhere in the world, especially in winter, when cost of natural gas for heating rises in R.I. Also, fishermen can adapt their methods to the turbines, whether or not they prefer to.
We all need heat and electricity. If you want to talk about harm to the environment, think about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexion, the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, shore birds drenched in black tar; tops of mountains cratered in coal country; men dying in coal mines; vinyl chloride spilled in a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; groundwater contamination from fracking; acid rain from Midwest factories killed New England lakes. If the view of tiny wind blade profiles on the distant ocean horizon causes suffering in Little Compton, maybe the residents there should think of sharing the burden with the rest of America.
Wind is clean; wind is constant; wind energy will continue to get cheaper and cheaper.
Lies! = “Wind is clean; wind is constant; wind energy will continue to get cheaper and cheaper.” Why is RI counting on OffShore Wind Scam and China’s Genocidal Solar Panels to achieve its 2050 Net zero goals? But reality and Physics prevent this. Once more, as people become even moderately literate on nuclear power vs. industrial solar and (particularly) wind, it will be game/set/match for these hugely inefficient boondoggles that do not meet the needs of any modern society, and which completely fail unless supported by reliable baseload power, of which nuclear is the most efficient and least harmful to the environment.