TWO OFFSHORE WIND projects have now secured preliminary injunctions enabling work to resume, and now Vineyard Wind 1 is also going to court in search of relief from a federal government stop-work order.
Equinor reported Thursday that it plans to resume construction on Empire Wind, a 54-turbine project off Long Island, N.Y. that is designed to provide enough power for 500,000 New York homes. The project is about 60 percent complete and has put about 4,000 people to work while revitalizing the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
While it secured relief in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Equinor said the underlying lawsuit challenging the US Department of the Interior’s December 22, 2025 suspension order will continue to proceed. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday against the stop work order for Revolution Wind, the offshore wind farm slated to power homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Vineyard Wind 1, the project that has already begun generating power while it remains under construction, had not filed a similar legal action seeking to restart construction until Thursday.
The company said it filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts challenging the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s December 22 suspension order.
“Vineyard Wind continues to work with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and other relevant stakeholders and authorities in the Administration to understand the matters raised in the Order,” the company said in a statement. “However, Vineyard Wind believes the Order violates applicable law and, if not promptly enjoined, will lead to immediate and irreparable harm to the project, and to the communities who will benefit from this critical source of new power for the New England region.”
Concerns about radar interference and unspecified national security risks were behind last month’s order from the federal government freezing large-scale offshore wind projects under construction off the US coast.
In a December letter to Vineyard Wind 1 officials, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said that the Department of War in November provided “new classified information, including the rapid evolution of relevant adversary technologies and the resulting direct impacts to national security from offshore wind projects.” Those impacts, the notice said, “are heightened” by Vineyard Wind 1’s “sensitive location on the East Coast and the potential to cause serious, immediate, and irreparable harm to our great nation.”