Weathering the storm: Tracking federal actions against offshore wind
Offshore wind is a vital technology that can generate clean electricity and bolster grid resilience. At a time when volatile fossil fuel prices and projected increases for energy demand threaten energy security and inflate costs for ratepayers, offshore wind offers a high-capacity clean generation source for states looking to decarbonize and improve energy affordability. Since the start of 2025, however, the federal government has attempted to systematically dismantle the American offshore wind industry through actions such as presidential memoranda and executive orders, offshore wind lease buybacks, permitting freezes, stop work orders, and, to a lesser extent, legislation such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). In response to challenges brought by affected states, project developers, and trade organizations, courts have enjoined or struck down many of the administration’s actions. But the administration has appealed some of these decisions, and the status of many offshore wind projects remains threatened.
Information on the status of the industry today is not well documented or centralized. And yet, understanding the status of offshore wind is critical, given the importance of the industry to the United States’ long-term energy prospects and the often-limited decarbonization and generation options for coastal population centers. Cataloging the multi-pronged efforts to obstruct offshore wind development and implementation both emphasizes the uncertainty currently facing offshore wind and highlights the impact of federal actions on the industry.
Broader context for clean energy
Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, many actions by the Department of Energy (DOE) have created uncertainty for developers and investors across several clean energy industries. Cuts in federal funding for clean energy projects have had substantial impacts on many states, eliminating jobs and economic opportunities and threatening states’ abilities to meet clean energy goals. Government-wide staffing cuts, including an approximately 20% decline in staffing at DOE since January 2025, have slowed the permitting process for energy projects significantly.
Offshore wind has been implicated in this broader context of funding cuts for clean energy and changes to government staffing. For example, staffing cuts at the DOE Wind Energy Technologies Office and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which sits within the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and is the lead agency on offshore wind permitting, have damaged agency capacity to permit and develop offshore wind. The administration also eliminated wind research and development and financial assistance programs at DOE, further obstructing offshore wind deployment.
Other administration actions, such as instituting tariffs, have increased project costs for several clean energy industries, including offshore wind. Fifty percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, two key materials in offshore wind components, have substantially increased costs for offshore wind developers. For example, in July 2026, the developer Dominion Energy increased its estimated total costs for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project by approximately $300 million dollars from its April 2026 cost estimate, citing tariffs to justify the increase.
In addition to the industry-wide challenges listed above, the administration has carried out a series of targeted actions to disrupt wind development, and in particular development of offshore wind. This blog documents the actions taken against the offshore wind industry since 2025 and identifies the implications these actions may have on efforts to build a reliable, decarbonized grid.
What has happened in the offshore wind industry?
Withdrawal of all areas of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) from offshore wind leasing
On the day of President Trump’s inauguration in 2025, the administration froze offshore wind permitting, withdrew all areas of the OCS from offshore wind leasing, and started a review of leasing and permitting practices through a presidential memorandum. In response to a lawsuit filed by states and a clean energy trade association (in which CATF and partners filed an amicus brief), the Federal District Court for Massachusetts vacated the lease freeze section of this memorandum in December 2025. However, federal agencies are still not permitting projects on the OCS.
Stop work orders and lease pauses
Next, BOEM began issuing stop work orders against fully permitted offshore wind projects. The first order, issued in April 2025, paused construction of the New York-based project Empire Wind and was ultimately lifted in May 2025. Even though BOEM eventually retracted the order, it reportedly cost Empire Wind’s developer approximately $200 million, or about $50 million per week while in effect. In August 2025, another stop work order targeted the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Revolution Wind sued, and in September 2025, the Federal District Court for D.C. granted a preliminary injunction, allowing the project to proceed.
DOI then paused the leases of five offshore wind projects (including Empire Wind and Revolution Wind again) on December 22nd, 2025, citing undisclosed national security concerns. These projects were fully permitted and had already begun construction, with one project (Vineyard Wind 1 in Massachusetts) near completion and actively delivering power to the grid. The developers of all five projects—Empire Wind, Revolution Wind, Vineyard Wind 1, Sunrise Wind, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind—brought lawsuits in response, and courts granted either preliminary injunctions or stays in each case.
Shortly after the DOI lease suspensions, regional clean energy associations filed a lawsuit alleging that some federal agencies were arbitrarily “disfavoring” development of wind and solar compared to other energy sources through actions such as delaying or vacating permitting approvals. They received a preliminary injunction on April 21st, 2026, and the federal government is currently appealing.
Lease buybacks
Since March 2026, the administration has used lease buybacks and settlements to remove several offshore wind lease areas from future development, potentially constraining the industry’s long-term growth if the settlements withstand judicial scrutiny. In these settlements, DOI agreed to pay developers an amount equal to their initial wind lease purchase price in exchange for the return of the wind leases to the federal government, with the stipulation that the developer reinvests this money into fossil fuel or other infrastructure. There have been five buybacks of twelve different leases as of November 2026, with a total cost of approximately $4 billion.
However, these settlements are not a refund to developers. They are new expenditures of taxpayer dollars from the Judgment Fund, which exists to pay court judgments and settlements for lawsuits against the federal government. They are therefore the subject of five lawsuits from nine states to date, including complaints filed by coalitions of northeastern states and two others filed by California.
National security claims
As part of the previously routine permitting process for both onshore and offshore wind, DOD is required to issue determinations that verify that the turbines do not interfere with national security. In April 2026, however, DOD stopped processing these determinations entirely, freezing permitting for proposed wind projects on both private and federal land. A coalition of clean energy trade associations subsequently filed a lawsuit against DOD, and CATF and seven other environmental groups filed an amicus brief in support of that lawsuit in June. In August, the Federal District Court in Oregon granted a preliminary injunction requiring that DOD begin issuing routine determinations once more.
President Trump also issued a proclamation on October 22, 2026 that declared wind turbine product imports to be a threat to national security. The proclamation cites a report from the Secretary of Commerce that reportedly identified cybersecurity, grid, and radar interference concerns from relying on foreign imported products. The proclamation directs the Secretary of Commerce to pursue trade negotiations and agreements with foreign trade partners and monitor the imports of wind products, but it refrained from imposing new or additional tariffs.
Creation of the Marine Minerals Administration (MMA)
In July 2026, the Trump administration initiated a process to combine BOEM and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) into the MMA. The Obama administration had originally separated these two offices after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 to create an organizational firewall between safety/environmental oversight functions and revenue collection functions, which had inherent conflicts of interest. The administration is recombining BOEM and BSEE, despite the conflicts of interest, in part to implement several executive orders that advance objectives related to fossil fuels and critical minerals. This includes Executive Order 14285, which focuses on developing additional capacity to assess and extract offshore critical mineral resources. Alongside staffing cuts at agencies like BOEM, the establishment of the MMA reduces and siloes BOEM’s role in permitting offshore wind, which requires substantial staffing and expertise. The organizational restructuring that would create the MMA is consistent with the administration’s other moves prioritizing offshore critical mineral extraction and fossil fuel development while deprioritizing offshore wind development. These actions constrain BOEM’s ability to exercise its authority to issue leases for renewable energy, despite Congress’s clear grant of authority to issue leases for that purpose under Section 8(p) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA).
Reexamining existing permits
In October 2026, the administration filed a series of motions in multiple legal challenges to offshore wind projects, agreeing with claims about BOEM’s construction and operations plans under OCSLA and seeking to have those approvals remanded to the agency. These motions are intended to allow DOI to reexamine permits for several projects that already cleared rigorous permitting processes, and, in the case of Revolution Wind, that are already fully built and in operation. DOI made requests with similar rationales for Revolution Wind, for Maryland Offshore Wind, and for New England Wind. This follows a court order from August 10, 2026 that granted a request from BOEM to reconsider its own approval of the Atlantic Shores Project, which was issued over the objection of the project developer.
Reduced tax incentives in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)
In addition to the administration’s actions, Congress has reduced the tax incentives available for offshore wind development through the July 2025 passage of the OBBBA. The law accelerated the termination of the 45X (Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit) for manufacturing wind components, and limited eligibility for 45Y (Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit) and 48E (Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit) for wind projects that begin construction after July 4, 2026. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, 45Y and 48E would have remained available until 2032 or the year the U.S. power sector achieved an emissions reduction target, while 45X was set to phase down in 2030 and expire in 2032. Following enactment of the OBBBA, wind projects “beginning construction” before July 4, 2026 remained eligible for 45Y and 48E. Developers could establish that construction had begun for the purpose of these credits by satisfying a 5% safe harbor provision, meaning they would need to demonstrate that they had spent 5% or more of the total cost of the project prior to July 4, 2026.
However, that same week in 2025, the administration issued an executive order that directed the Secretary of the Treasury to implement and enforce the OBBBA termination of clean energy tax credits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) subsequently released a notice that eliminated the 5% safe harbor methodology for wind tax credit eligibility. Several environmental groups challenged the IRS’s implementation of President Trump’s executive order, and on June 6th, 2026, the Federal District Court for D.C. vacated and remanded the notice.
What are the implications?
From the beginning of the second Trump administration, actions by the federal government have obstructed offshore wind development. Despite the administration’s nearly unbroken record of court losses related to wind energy, the lag between federal actions, lawsuits, and legal verdicts costs American ratepayers: any delay in offshore wind construction and permitting prevents necessary energy generation from getting online to meet continuing load growth projections. And, because of the specialized equipment needed to build offshore wind, delays often compound if the developer misses a construction window, racking up substantial additional costs. Upstream, the communities investing in developing a U.S. supply chain and manufacturing sector, such as specialized shipbuilders in Louisiana, are seeing their investments sit idle.
The uncertainty created by interfering with lawfully issued permits, halting permit processing for specific technologies, and interrupting construction of projects already in development also has long-term consequences for the energy sector and the American economy. Energy projects often require years of planning, development, and construction prior to initiating operations. Energy industry investors, faced with uncertainty due to arbitrary federal actions, may assess a riskier environment for all energy sector investment, and they will likely respond by reducing their exposure across all technologies. Investors need some degree of certainty that their long-term energy projects will be built even as power changes hands between political parties. The administration’s efforts to reexamine approvals of projects already permitted, under construction, and even in operation also emphasize the importance of ensuring that permits, once issued, remain durable through a project’s lifetime.
Offshore wind offers immense potential for domestic economic growth if given the opportunity for investment, as projections indicate that it could generate more than 186,000 jobs across its national supply chain and could demand $42 billion in US steel over the next two decades. The administration’s actions against offshore wind therefore threaten to cede a profitable and high potential U.S. industry to international competitors in China and the European Union, who are already leaders in offshore wind; as of 2025, China had deployed approximately 52 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind, while the EU had deployed 21 GW, with both planning to install significantly more over the next few years. The offshore wind lease buybacks add to these geopolitical concerns, effectively removing a domestic and clean source of electricity in offshore wind and largely replacing it with infrastructure for export of liquified natural gas (LNG). Pursuing this course of action when the United States needs more domestic electricity generation to meet increasing energy demand weakens U.S. energy security and increases costs for ratepayers.
In addition, efforts to dismantle offshore wind impair many U.S. states’ abilities to meet projected load growth and decarbonization goals. The federal blockade forces many states to increase use of oil and gas peaker plants to meet high energy demand, generating more emissions and decreasing local air quality. Federal barriers to offshore wind also generate immense uncertainty for states working to proactively develop long-term energy and transmission plans.
Several of these states have also invested heavily in offshore wind workforce development (and continue to do so), with specialized training programs that are now in jeopardy. In addition to the training programs themselves, individuals who are already working in the offshore wind industry face severely constrained job prospects and risk their highly specialized training becoming a sunk cost.
In a separate post, CATF examines whether project certainty provisions in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) would prevent near-term actions stopping clean energy projects and recommends changes to that bill to improve its efficacy.
The case for offshore wind remains strong despite continued uncertainty
The series of actions taken by the second Trump administration against offshore wind has been wide-ranging and disruptive, but offshore wind remains an important and viable technology that can assist states in addressing projected load growth, improving reliability, and meeting decarbonization goals. Projects that have been completed, such as Vineyard Wind 1 in Massachusetts, are offering critical value to the grid. Offshore wind has also significantly outperformed other energy resources and reduced electricity costs during severe weather events. Vineyard Wind 1, for example, had a much higher capacity factor—a measurement of how much electricity the project actually generated in a given time period compared to the maximum amount of electricity it could have generated— than natural gas plants during Winter Storm Fern. The capacity factor for South Fork Wind, an offshore wind project off the coast of Long Island, was essentially equivalent to the most efficient natural gas plants during the same winter storm, while also reducing power prices. Offshore wind makes a difference during heat waves as well, adding needed capacity to the grid when there is high electricity demand for cooling and lowering costs for ratepayers by reducing the need to turn on expensive peaker plants.
Offshore wind advocates, including CATF, continue to pursue legal and other advocacy strategies to pushback against federal actions that are impeding offshore wind development. CATF has also engaged in research and outreach on offshore wind, authoring a playbook that provides guidance for East Coast states to collaboratively accelerate offshore wind development. The playbook highlights that despite the federal uncertainty, states can continue to advocate and plan for offshore wind, develop the necessary workforce, and further lay the groundwork for the industry once the federal government begins permitting again.
