The Department of the Interior asks a federal judge to return the permit for reconsideration, marking the fourth East Coast project targeted under Donald Trump’s clean energy rollback.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has asked a federal court to remand a key environmental approval granted to the multi-gigawatt New England Wind project off the Massachusetts coast, escalating its broader campaign to dismantle offshore wind energy development along the Atlantic seaboard.
In a motion submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, the Department of Justice urged a federal judge to send the project’s Construction and Operations Plan back to the Department of the Interior. Federal attorneys argued that the permit, issued under the Biden administration in 2024, was authorized despite significant unaddressed adverse impacts.
The legal maneuver marks the fourth offshore wind venture targeted for administrative reassessment by the Trump administration in recent months. The developer, Avangrid, designed the project to deploy up to 129 wind turbines generating roughly 2,600 megawatts of electricity—enough capacity to supply more than 900,000 residential homes annually. Ground construction has not started. Avangrid declined to comment on the filing.
The project had already faced litigation brought by ACK for Whales, an advocacy group of Nantucket residents arguing that federal regulators had approved the installation in violation of statutory wildlife and environmental protections. Rather than continuing to defend the previous administration’s approval in court, Justice Department lawyers formally notified the judge that the Interior Department seeks to re-evaluate the original permit entirely.
The Interior Department stated Wednesday that its court filing aligned with an established judicial briefing schedule rather than marking a shift in administrative doctrine, asserting its regulatory stance against offshore installations has remained firm. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized wind turbines as visually intrusive, costly, and unreliable compared to domestic fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
The move drew immediate criticism on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers warned the intervention could collapse delicate bipartisan negotiations on federal energy permitting. In September, the Senate reached a cross-party agreement aimed at accelerating environmental reviews for both renewable and conventional energy infrastructure. That measure has yet to receive a floor vote.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the administration’s actions threaten to unravel those legislative compromises. “This is how you blow up a permitting deal,” Whitehouse said in a statement.
Industry groups representing traditional and offshore operators expressed growing alarm over regulatory unpredictability. Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association—a trade body representing offshore oil, gas, and wind developers—warned that retroactively revisiting signed federal authorizations creates long-term instability for all energy capital investments, particularly those with operational assets already deployed.
Legal challenges and administrative pauses have mounted across the East Coast. The Interior Department is pursuing identical reassessments for Rhode Island and Connecticut’s completed Revolution Wind installation, as well as the unbuilt Maryland Offshore Wind Project. In August, a federal judge granted a government request to reconsider the authorization for New Jersey’s Atlantic Shores facility, which stalled earlier when joint venture partner Shell withdrew. In 2025, a court also permitted the administration to reconsider the approval for SouthCoast Wind off Massachusetts.
The regulatory push follows earlier attempts to cancel offshore wind leases outright or halt work under national security provisions. Despite federal efforts to freeze construction on Vineyard Wind—a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners off Massachusetts—crews finished building the project in March, making it the first large-scale offshore wind facility completed during Trump’s current term.
