The Trump administration is seeking to reopen the federal approval of Revolution Wind, the 6.2 billion dollar offshore wind farm off Rhode Island developed by Denmark’s Orsted with Skyborn Renewables. In a filing in the Green Oceans lawsuit, the Interior Department said it agrees that remand of its prior approval of the project’s construction and operations plan is warranted so the agency can reevaluate its compliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
The timing is what makes the filing material. Revolution Wind is a 704 megawatt project that installed its 65th and final turbine in September, has been delivering power to New England since March, and is expected to reach full operation by the end of the year, supplying around 350,000 homes and businesses. The approval under challenge dates from 2023.
Interior said the filing complies with a briefing schedule and is not a policy change, and criticised the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s 2023 record of decision for failing to adequately explain how impacts on other ocean uses, including fishing and recreation, fit the agency’s mission. A federal judge in January ruled that evidence on military radar impacts was insufficient to justify halting a project this far advanced, after an earlier stop work order.
Industry reaction focused on permit durability. The National Ocean Industries Association called for predictable regulatory processes and timely decisions, and Senator Martin Heinrich, a negotiator on a bipartisan permitting agreement, said the filing shows why permitting certainty needs to be put in law. For investors, a remand does not itself cancel the project, but it puts an operating asset’s authorisation back in play and raises the risk premium on every US offshore wind permit that follows it.