The Trump administration is continuing its campaign against the offshore wind industry, and Dominion Energy is now one of the targets.
The U.S. Interior Department last month issued a 90-day pause for work on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, as well as four others in New England. Officials cited national security risks “identified in recently completed classified reports.”
The $11 billion Virginia Beach project, which stretches about 27 to 44 miles off the Oceanfront, was expected to start delivering electricity to the grid within months and finish construction later this year.
“We stand ready to do what is necessary to get these vital electrons flowing as quickly as possible,” the utility stated in a December news release.
Dominion quickly sued the federal government, calling the stop-work order “arbitrary and capricious.” The first hearing in the case is set for Friday in Norfolk.
How we got here
The Virginia wind farm has been in the works for more than a decade.
Dominion acquired a 113,000-acre federal lease for the project in 2013 for $1.7 million. (The utility has since purchased an adjoining lease next to the existing site, though officials have not yet announced any development plans.)
After a lengthy review process, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, or CVOW, won approval from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, in 2023 under the Biden administration.
The company started building the project the following year. It includes 176 wind turbines expected to produce about 2.6 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power up to 660,000 homes.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting all new federal leases and permits for wind energy. It did not stop projects already fully permitted and under construction, such as Dominion’s.
Over the past year, the administration has taken further actions against offshore wind, but the Virginia project was unaffected until the order last month.
The Interior Department said the pause is meant to address “national security risks inherent to large-scale offshore wind projects,” claiming the movement of turbine blades and highly reflective towers creates radar interference.
The federal government’s review of Dominion’s project in 2023 found it could cause “negligible to minor adverse impacts” for aviation and air traffic and moderate impacts for military and national security uses. The company is required to mitigate any unacceptable interference as part of its approval.
Dominion’s lawsuit challenging last month’s action states the order “identified no analytical shortcoming in BOEM’s previous approval of the project to justify this immediate stoppage.”
The company said the construction pause is costing more than $5 million per day related to work vessels alone. Dominion has already spent about $9 billion on the project.
Delaying the project’s completion would result in a “substantially higher” total cost, borne by customers through rates and lack of energy added to the grid, attorneys wrote.
Norwegian company Equinor, Danish Orsted and New York Attorney General Letitia James have filed similar lawsuits.
On Monday, Orsted won a victory in court for its Revolution Wind project in Rhode Island and Connecticut. A federal judge said the government did not explain why it could not take action short of a complete stop to construction to mitigate national security concerns and did not provide sufficient reasoning for its change in position.
The CVOW project previously drew bipartisan support from Virginia lawmakers, including outgoing Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said in a statement that she would work with industry and elected leaders to make sure the project is completed.
“Halting this project not only risks higher rates for consumers but leaves Virginia vulnerable to grid disruptions and national security risks,” Spanberger stated.
A second lawsuit remains
Meanwhile, Dominion is still fighting another lawsuit over its offshore wind project, filed two years ago.
A coalition of conservative interest groups, including the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, sued the company and the federal government for approving CVOW.
The groups, which have a history of opposing renewable energy, argued officials failed to consider the project’s potential impacts on marine life, including endangered whales.
Dominion points to measures it is required to use to protect marine life, such as reduced boat speeds and dampening the sound of underwater construction.
A federal judge in 2024 denied the plaintiffs’ initial request to halt construction, but the lawsuit remained ongoing.
After Trump took office and expressed concerns about offshore wind, it was unclear whether the government would continue to defend itself in court. Government attorneys have asked for several extensions to decide how to proceed, with the next deadline set for Feb. 2.
H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Heartland Institute’s climate and environmental policy center, previously said the goal was to prevent Dominion from building the project at the outset.
It’s “too late for that,” he said last summer, but hoped Trump would intervene outside the courtroom.
