Orsted, the Danish renewable energy giant, sued the Trump administration on Thursday, saying the government’s move to halt a nearly finished wind farm off Rhode Island was unlawful and “issued in bad faith.”
The administration last month took the remarkable step of ordering work to stop on Revolution Wind, a $6.2 billion offshore wind farm that was nearly 80 percent complete, as part of a campaign to block wind projects. In a letter to Orsted, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management alluded to national security concerns with the project but did not elaborate.
On Thursday, Revolution Wind LLC, a joint venture between Orsted and Skyborn Renewables, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the administration from enforcing the stop-work order. The complaint alleges that the order was arbitrary and capricious in part because it appeared to be carried out under political pressure from the White House.
The 65-turbine Revolution Wind project had obtained financing as well as all necessary permits from the Biden administration. Construction began in 2023, and the developers had said it was on track to produce enough electricity for more than 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut by next spring.
In their complaint, the developers said that they had already spent $5 billion on the project and would incur another $1 billion in financial penalties from failing to complete it, while also losing billions of dollars in future revenue if the project was canceled.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said it did not comment on pending litigation.
President Trump has been a vocal critic of wind firms for years, calling them ugly and inefficient. His administration has sharply escalated its attacks on the wind industry in recent months, moving to block not just future wind projects but also projects that have already been permitted and under construction.
The White House has also enlisted a half-dozen federal agencies to find new ways to thwart offshore wind as part of a governmentwide effort to suppress the industry. That includes asking the Health and Human Services Department to probe the health effects of wind turbines and the Department of Defense to find any national security concerns.
In April, the Interior Department ordered that work be stopped at Empire Wind, a $5 billion wind farm off the coast of New York that had received all necessary approvals from the Biden administration and was already being built. After several weeks of negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, the administration allowed Empire Wind to proceed.
White House officials suggested they had done so only after Ms. Hochul agreed to approve new gas pipelines in the state. She denied that any such deal had been made.
Equinor, the Norwegian energy giant that was building Empire Wind, never ended up suing the administration over the monthlong pause. The company had warned that it was losing nearly $50 million per week while the project was halted and that it might have to abandon it altogether if the stop-work order continued for much longer.
Orsted is taking legal action more rapidly. The Danish government owns a 50.1 percent share in the company, which saw its stock price plunge to record lows last month after the stop-work order.
Denmark and the United States have repeatedly been at odds under the Trump administration, with Denmark rejecting Mr. Trump’s insistence that the United States take over Greenland. Last month, Denmark summoned the head of the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen after allegations that three Americans with ties to President Trump were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland.
In a statement, the developers behind Revolution Wind said that “the project is facing substantial harm from continuation of the stop-work order, and as a result, litigation is a necessary step.”
Before it obtained federal permits, Revolution Wind went through a multiyear review process that included the Defense Department, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service and several other agencies.
Some legal experts have said that there is little basis for blocking projects that have already received permits.
Elizabeth Klein, who led the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management during the Biden administration, said the agency did have the ability to halt projects for national security reasons. But even in those cases, the agency is required to follow a process that includes a written notification describing the basis of its concerns. And the regulator would typically discuss issues with the developer rather than abruptly stop work without warning.
“Even under the most generous interpretation of what is happening here, if there were some issue that arose that suggested a threat, there would be a dialogue between the regulator and the proponent,” Ms. Klein said. “There’s no actual justification to stop the project.”
The administration is also pursuing other strategies for blocking offshore wind. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump ordered a sweeping halt to all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. And it has sought to revoke permits for projects that have already been approved but are facing litigation by opponents.
On Wednesday the Trump administration said in another court filing that it planned to revoke federal approvals for the New England Wind project, about 20 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Construction has not yet begun, but if completed it would be one of the largest offshore wind projects in the country.
A group in Nantucket that is opposed to offshore wind, ACK for Whales, had filed a lawsuit to challenge New England Wind’s permits, saying that the project posed a danger to the endangered North Atlantic right whale. Scientists have said there is no evidence to link wind farms to whale deaths. In a filing, the Justice Department said that the lawsuit no longer needed to proceed since the administration was rescinding the project’s permit.
Over the weekend, the Democratic governors of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island released a letter warning that revoking permits for offshore wind farms would be destabilizing for a wide range of energy projects.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have also sued the administration over Mr. Trump’s halting of federal approvals for wind projects.
The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts federal court, argued that the move violated the Administrative Procedure Act and harmed the efforts by states to secure energy and fight climate change while jeopardizing billions of dollars in investments. The Alliance for Clean Energy New York, a coalition of environmental and clean energy industry groups, later joined the suit as a plaintiff.
Administration lawyers countered that the injuries to New York were hypothetical rather than imminent and that the pause in federal permitting was necessary “based on concerns over potential legal deficiencies in past practices, the possibility of serious harm to various interests and marine mammals, and the potential inadequacies of various environmental reviews,” according to a memo signed by Michael K. Robertson, a trial attorney in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department.
In July, Judge William G. Young narrowed the case but allowed it to proceed. A hearing was set to be held on Thursday afternoon.
Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.
Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.
Karen Zraick covers legal affairs for the Climate desk and the courtroom clashes playing out over climate and environmental policy.
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