A federal judge in Washington ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may reconsider the Biden-era approval of SouthCoast Wind, a wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.
The decision dealt a setback to the developers of the project, a joint venture between the energy companies EDP Renewables and ENGIE. And it handed a victory to the White House, which has ordered a half-dozen federal agencies to draft plans to thwart offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the project developers would not “suffer immediate and significant hardship” if the Trump administration were allowed to reconsider the permit.
The decision would effectively allow the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to re-evaluate its approval of the project’s construction and operations plan. The agency had approved the plan on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Mr. Trump’s second term began.
As proposed, SouthCoast Wind would include 141 turbines in federal waters about 23 miles south of Nantucket. When completed, it would generate up to 2,400 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than 840,000 homes in New England.
The project is being developed in two phases and has not yet started construction. The first phase, known as SouthCoast Wind 1, would provide power to both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Representatives for SouthCoast Wind did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an earlier filing in the case, Michael Brown, the chief executive of SouthCoast Wind, said the company had already spent more than $600 million on the project.
“When making these investment decisions, SouthCoast Wind understandably expected that the federal government would follow valid statutes and regulations setting out criteria for issuance of permits,” Mr. Brown wrote.
Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group that represents developers of offshore wind farms as well as companies that drill for oil and gas in the ocean, said he was disappointed by the ruling. “We’re concerned about any delays in any of these projects when they’ve already gone through the vetting and approval process,” Mr. Milito said in an interview Tuesday.
The Trump administration said in September that it would weigh whether to revoke the Biden-era approval of the project. Months earlier, in March, the town of Nantucket sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in an effort to block the project. The town accused the agency of failing to comply with environmental and historical preservation laws when it issued the permit.
Soon after returning to the White House, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping order to halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. His administration has since gone after several wind farms that had been given federal permits by the Biden administration and were either under construction or about to start.
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 30 percent completed. After several weeks and negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, the administration allowed Empire Wind to proceed.
White House officials suggested they had relented only after Ms. Hochul agreed to approve new gas pipelines in the state. Ms. Hochul denied that any such deal had been made.
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
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