Supreme Court Rejects Offshore Wind Permit Appeal While States Sue Over Permitting Pause

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--This week has brought about two significant moves in the legal battles surrounding U.S. policies on wind power. As the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to upend the Biden-era permitting of the Vineyard Wind 1 windfarm off the Massachusetts coast, attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration over an executive order to stop permitting for onshore and offshore wind projects.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied two petitions for a hearing from fishing consortiums seeking to vacate the permitting for the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project off the Nantucket coast, which was made under the Biden administration. The petitions were made by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) and a group of companies led by Seafreeze Shoreside Incorporated (Narragansett, Rhode Island) and represented by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas.

Both organizations claim that the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management disregarded their duties under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect the environment and national security. RODA had lost its case in two previous courts: the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts and the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where the judge upheld the lower court's decision. Seafreeze Shoreside and partners had their case dismissed by the First Circuit Court as well.

The Vineyard Wind 1 project will include 62 GE Vernova (NYSE:GEV) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) Haliade-X turbines, each rated at 13 megawatts (MW), to provide aggregate generation of more than 800 MW, or enough to power 400,000 homes in the region, according to the developers. The project is a joint venture of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Avangrid Incorporated (NYSE:AGR) (Orange, Connecticut). Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Project Database can learn more by viewing the related project reports. The project has not been without problems. A blade fell from one of the turbines last summer, resulting in debris being washed up on Nantucket beaches and forcing temporary closures. The incident necessitated the replacement of blades on 22 installed turbine platforms. Earlier this year, the turbine whose blade fell was struck by lightning.

The Supreme Court's rejection may not prove an end to the battle, however. TPPF Senior Attorney Ted Hadzi-Antich said in a statement on Monday: "We will continue to pursue our goal of shutting down the Vineyard Wind project by filing an administrative petition with the Secretary of the Interior, seeking reevaluation of the legal and factual missteps of the Biden Administration in approving a project that is so harmful to safety, the environment, and national defense."

Skirting the courts to petition the administration is not without foundation. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ordered work to cease at the Empire wind project off the Long Island coast "until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis." The move came despite the project's employing more than 1,000 workers onsite and being 30% complete. For more information, see May 2, 2025, article - Equinor Stands to Lose Billions Over Trump's Offshore Wind Battle and the related project report. As of mid-April, developers had installed 32 of the 62 turbine towers for the Vineyard Wind project, some without blades, according to The New Bedford Light.

Onshore wind has also been in the Trump administration's crosshairs, as a January 20 executive order states that the heads of various agencies "shall not issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases, or loans for onshore or offshore wind projects pending the completion of a comprehensive assessment and review of Federal wind leasing and permitting practices." To this end, Democratic states with pending onshore and offshore wind projects have joined to sue President Donald Trump and members of his administration over the order, stating the directive "has stopped most wind-energy development in its tracks, despite the fact that wind energy is a homegrown source of reliable, affordable energy that supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, creates billions of dollars in economic activity and tax payments, and supplies more than ten percent of the country's electricity."

The states also noted that the order seemed to contradict Trump's own declaration of an "energy emergency" and call to bring about "energy dominance" by thwarting a proven form of power. The states and the District of Columbia are seeking an injunction against the unilateral freeze on new development. Named defendants include the Department of Energy and Secretary Chris Wright, the Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum and Trump himself. The coalition filing the suit includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Washington, D.C. The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Massachusetts.

The administration itself has filed litigation against states, including New York, Vermont, Michigan and Hawaii, for potentially violating federal law by enforcing climate change laws against fossil fuel companies.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 trillion (USD).