BOSTON — Attorneys for several states including Massachusetts and the Trump administration sparred in federal court Thursday over the president’s attempts to pause offshore wind permitting, while a pair of other New England states also opened up a new front in the legal battle over wind power.
Attorneys general in Rhode Island and Connecticut announced plans to file a new lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s order to halt work at the nearly-complete Revolution Wind project.
Rhode Island AG Peter Neronha and Connecticut AG William Tong, both Democrats, said the installation had been fully vetted and approved at both the state and federal levels “and is supported by binding contracts and legal mandates.”
“Revolution Wind is fully permitted, nearly complete and months from providing enough American-made, clean, affordable energy to power 350,000 homes,” Tong said in a statement. “Now, with zero justification, Trump wants to mothball the project, send workers home, and saddle Connecticut families with millions of dollars in higher energy costs. This kind of erratic and reckless governing is blatantly illegal, and we’re suing to stop it.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Aug. 22 halted work at Revolution Wind, which is about 80% complete, citing “concerns related to the protection of national security interests.” Project developer Ørsted on Thursday sued the Trump administration in a bid to get its project back on track.
President Donald Trump for years has been a vocal opponent of offshore wind, an industry that New England elected officials from both parties have touted as key to the region’s energy independence and economic development.
Federal officials are also scrutinizing other projects including New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind.
The AGs said their lawsuit would be filed Thursday afternoon in the District of Rhode Island federal court, seeking to “restore the rule of law, protect their energy and economic interests, and ensure that the federal government honors its commitments.”
Neronha appeared to reference a New York Times report published Wednesday that said the White House has instructed several government agencies to work together on upending the offshore wind industry.
“Just yesterday, we learned of reports that the Administration is pulling in staff from several different unrelated federal agencies, including Health and Human Services, to do its bidding. Does this sound like a federal government that is prioritizing the American people?” Neronha said. “This is bizarre, this is unlawful, this is potentially devastating, and we won’t stand by and watch it happen.”
Their lawsuit will allege that the stop work order at Revolution Wind violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, laws the attorneys general said “demand reasoned decision-making, fidelity to statutory limits, and respect for the settled expectations of sovereign States and regulated parties.”
More than a dozen attorneys general, including Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell, made a similar argument in a lawsuit they filed in May challenging Trump’s Jan. 20 directive ordering federal officials not to issue permits for wind projects before completion of a “comprehensive assessment” of leasing and permitting practices.
Their case emerged for oral arguments before Judge William Young in the John Joseph Moakley federal courthouse Thursday.
Plaintiffs, including Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Turner Smith, contended that Trump’s order runs afoul of the APA by pausing all permitting nationwide without a specified end date.
“States are already suffering significant harms as a result of this pause. We’re eight months in and counting with no end in sight,” Turner said. “We have harms to our ability to provide reliable and affordable energy to our residents. We have harms to our ability to meet our state statutory clean energy and climate goals, as Your Honor recognized. We have significant economic harms that are playing out on the ground already.”
“The fact that the agency has discretion or doesn’t face strict timelines for every single action that has to happen or be approved before a wind energy project can go forward doesn’t mean that the agency can just shut down that program willy-nilly on the basis of a presidential directive that invokes a couple of buzzwords like national security or the environment,” added James Auslander, an attorney for the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. “The Administrative Procedure Act would be rendered meaningless if agencies could just point to the president’s words and provide no administrative record for their actions.”
Michael Robertson, an attorney for the Trump administration, contended that the president’s order does not outright declare that no permits will ever be issued for wind power.
“If we look at the wind directive, the key parts of it are that there is going to be an assessment and review attached to this, that it’s going to be consistent with applicable law, and the president’s justifications that he provided for the wind directive,” Robertson said. “We might be in a different scenario under the APA if none of those three things were there, if the president just said, full stop, ‘That’s it.’ But even if it’s abbreviated, that explanation is sufficient under the APA to address these decisions.”
The judge did not indicate when he will issue a decision in the case.