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Trump’s Interior Department halted construction on 704 megawatt (MW) Revolution Wind, the US’s first multi-state offshore wind project that’s already 80% complete. Grid operator ISO New England says the decision is a threat to the grid.
ISO New England released a statement responding to the stop-work order, warning that “delaying the project will increase risks to reliability.”:
As demand for electricity grows, New England must maintain and add to its energy infrastructure. Unpredictable risks and threats to resources – regardless of technology – that have made significant capital investments, secured necessary permits, and are close to completion will stifle future investments, increase costs to consumers, and undermine the power grid’s reliability and the region’s economy now and in the future.
Revolution Wind, a joint development between Ørsted and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, is a 65-turbine project capable of powering around 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut once it’s complete. It was expected to come online next year. The project has created more than 1,200 jobs.
On August 22, the director of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management sent a vague letter to Ørsted commanding it to halt all activities on the fully permitted Revolution Wind, citing “national security interests,” yet providing no details.
BOEM’s Record of Decision for Revolution Wind, reported in 2023 in Section 4.6, page 185, states that the national security effects of the project would be “negligible and avoidable.”
This latest move echoes Trump’s cancellation in April of New York’s $5 billion Empire Wind 1 project, which was already under construction off New York’s coast. No viable reasons were given for that stop-work order either, and the cancellation was reversed in May.
Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), released the following statement in response to the Revolution Wind order:
The Trump administration’s war on the electricity needed to power the grid continues on all fronts. Halting Revolution Wind is a devastating attack on workers, on electricity customers, and on the investment climate in the US.
New England homeowners will feel this when they tear open their electricity bills and look at the surging costs of keeping the lights on.
This administration has it exactly backwards. It’s trying to prop up clunky, polluting coal plants while doing all it can to halt the fastest growing energy sources of the future – solar and wind power.
It makes no sense to say we have an energy emergency and then make decisions like this. Unfortunately, every American is paying the price for these misguided actions.
Read more: Trump reversal revives Empire Wind, NY’s offshore energy giant
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