Trump Is Winning the Fight Against Offshore Wind Despite Court Losses

The Revolution Wind project assembly site at State Pier in New London, Connecticut, on Sept. 30, 2025. Photographer: Joe Buglewicz/Bloomberg Photo by Joe Buglewicz /Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump’s campaign against offshore wind power in the US sustained major setbacks last week when three different judges blocked enforcement of a government ban and allowed projects in New York, Rhode Island and Virginia to resume construction. And two others may win similar decisions soon.

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But Trump may already have won his battle to gut the industry, even if the turbines now under construction begin supplying electricity as planned in the next year or so. That’s because the dramatic shift in US government policy since Joe Biden was president has escalated the risk of investing in multibillion-dollar projects that already were facing significant financial and technical hurdles.

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“The courts can stop the abrupt enforcement of policies, but they can’t really restart a stable pipeline for these projects,” said Atin Jain, an analyst at BloombergNEF. “Under this kind of policy environment, nobody is going to touch US offshore wind for some time.” 

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And there’s still a possibility Trump prevails in court. So far, rulings allowing construction to resume are temporary, and decisions have yet to be made on the merits of company lawsuits claiming the government’s Dec. 22 stop-work order was illegal. The administration has pledged to keep fighting, saying the projects pose undisclosed national security risks.

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“President Trump will continue to aggressively implement his energy dominance agenda to lower energy bills, improve our grid stability and protect our national security,” said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers.Since returning to the White House, Trump put forward a flurry of policies designed to undermine the renewable energy industry while boosting production of fossil fuels. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order pausing federal approvals of wind projects on federal lands and oceans, throwing the industry into months of uncertainty. In December, a federal judge ruled that decree illegal.

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Along with the stop-work orders for projects already underway, the administration also has indicated in court filings that it intends to retract offshore wind projects approved under Biden that have yet to commence construction. The former president had been a champion of the industry, calling for construction of enough turbines spinning off US coasts to produce the same amount of electricity as 30 nuclear reactors.

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Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill also sped up the phaseout of federal tax credits for offshore wind, where projects need to start work by the middle of this year to qualify. Without such subsidies, offshore wind costs about $199 per megawatt-hour, according to estimates by BloombergNEF, making it a lot harder for developers to justify the economics to their investors. 

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The flurry of roadblocks thrown up by the administration has essentially clipped the wings of the US offshore wind industry.  ​​​​​Early last year, BloombergNEF saw the potential for about 46 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity by 2040. Now, the research firm expects only 6.1 gigawatts, which is almost all of the capacity of the current projects. “The odds of any new starts are very, very low under the current federal position on the wind industry,” Jain said.