Overview
- U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted a preliminary injunction for Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind, the final halted project to win relief from December’s stop-work orders.
- With this decision, all five East Coast projects—Revolution Wind, Empire Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Vineyard Wind and Sunrise Wind—are cleared to keep building while lawsuits continue.
- Courts said the government’s undisclosed national-security claims were not adequately explained after in-camera review, and they credited evidence of irreparable harm including loss of specialized vessels and mounting costs.
- Sunrise Wind is a 924-megawatt project roughly 45% complete with about $7 billion spent, projected to power roughly 600,000 New York homes, and it reported losses in the low millions per day during the pause.
- The White House defends the pause as a national-security measure and vows to keep fighting, while analysts say Trump’s actions have already curtailed U.S. offshore wind buildout from prior goals despite the court wins.