Virginia Power Company Heads to Court Seeking To Reverse Trump Hold on Offshore Wind Power

Lawyers for Virginia’s largest energy company will be in federal court on Monday seeking a temporary restraining order to block a Trump administration order that halted work on a major offshore wind project.District Judge Jamar Walker has set a hearing for 2 p.m. at Norfolk regarding a lawsuit filed by Dominion Energy Virginia, which says it is losing more than $5 million a day because of the administration’s action.The Interior Department this week ordered a halt to five major offshore wind projects for at least 90 days, citing what it said were national security risks identified by the Pentagon. The other projects are in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.According to letters to the companies shared with the Associated Press, the department will coordinate with project developers during that time “to determine whether the national security threats posed by this project can be adequately mitigated.”The department publicly announced the suspensions on Monday but did not identify the security concerns. However President Trump has frequently voiced his opposition to offshore wind power, describing it on his Truth Social platform as “the scam of the century.”Early in his administration Mr. Trump issued an executive order pausing the issuance of offshore wind leases and permits pending an Interior Department review. That order was struck down on December 8 by a federal judge in Massachusetts who described the order as “arbitrary and capricious.”In a statement on its website, Dominion Energy argues that its project, labeled Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, is needed to address a surge in power demand created by the establishment of dozens of new data centers.The company says that stopping the project “for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, AI, and civilian assets.” The state is home to the world’s largest naval base at Norfolk and the country’s largest ship-building operation.The company says a prolonged shutdown would also “lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs.” It adds that two pilot turbines have been operating at the offshore site “for five years without causing any impacts to national security.”The project, located more than 27 miles offshore, is nearing completion and scheduled to come online early next year, providing sufficient energy to power 660,000 homes. The Trump administration has not publicly commented on the lawsuit.

Virginia Power Company Heads to Court Seeking To Reverse Trump Hold on Offshore Wind Power

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