US in Talks With States Over Offshore Wind Dispute, Group Says
(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration and officials from multiple Northeast states are in talks to resolve a dispute over a massive, nearly complete offshore wind project that was ordered to shut down in August, the head of a US clean energy trade group said.
A federal judge ruled Monday that developer Orsted A/S can resume work on Revolution Wind while a lawsuit proceeds through the courts. Local agencies and federal officials are now pursuing a deal to prevent another blow to the project off the coast of Rhode Island, according to Jason Grumet, chief executive officer of the American Clean Power Association.
The negotiations are the latest wrinkle in the contentious relationship between the White House and clean energy. While President Donald Trump has criticized wind power and promoted policies that will slow the deployment of renewable energy capacity, the actions risk hurting communities that have come to depend on these infrastructure projects for jobs and tax revenue.
“The idea of stopping construction of a massive infrastructure project isn’t landing well,” Grumet said during an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “It seems like they are now looking for a resolution that will not stop the project from providing power to the region.”
Work on the project co-owned by Orsted and Global Infrastructure Partners had been paused after the administration issued a stop-work order, citing national security concerns. A judge issued a preliminary injunction this week, ruling that work could continue during a lawsuit challenging the order.
The US clean energy industry has endured a wave of measures from the Trump administration designed to undermine the financial and policy support for wind and solar power offered under the Biden administration. Those include the phasing out of tax breaks under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and permitting reviews that are now stalling a significant number of solar and wind developments. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
The whipsawing in energy policy threatens to do lasting harm to the nation’s economy, where there is now a tremendous need to add new power resources to the grid to meet demand from AI data centers, Grumet said. He said there are a number of international energy companies in his trade group who are now putting a “risk premium” on investment in the US.
“The recent history of our country is that every administration complains about the prior administration’s policies and then chooses to make them worse,” Grumet said. “It’s hard to be bullish on the idea of modernizing our infrastructure if we don’t get off this merry-go-round.”
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