Citing national security concerns, the Trump administration suspended five federal leases for offshore wind projects on Monday — the latest salvo in the White House’s fight against renewable energy. Two New England projects, Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind, were among those caught in the crosshairs.
In a social media post, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called the projects “expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized.”
An Interior Department press release stated wind turbines pose a threat by interfering with radar, a claim disputed by industry experts. It appears to be a new tactic, just two weeks after a federal judge said the Trump administration did not have the authority to stop wind farm leases via executive order.
🚨Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @Interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms!
— Secretary Doug Burgum (@SecretaryBurgum) December 22, 2025
ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED. @POTUS is bringing common sense back to…
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey slammed the administration’s move to suspend the leases.
“Energy costs are already too high. It makes absolutely no sense for the Trump Administration to halt construction on a project that is bringing more affordable energy to our region,” said Healey in a statement, adding that construction of Vineyard Wind has employed nearly 4,000 people in Massachusetts. “This puts people out of work during the holidays.”
Vineyard Wind is nearing the completion of construction off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard and is currently capable of producing some 572 megawatts of power, according to the governor’s office. The project has been delivering power to the New England grid since the beginning of the year. During a recent cold snap, the project was already eliminating some $2 million a day in costs to ratepayers by displacing the need for additional natural gas, according to an analysis done by the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
On Monday, hours after the announcement by the Trump administration, nearly half of the renewable energy on the New England grid was coming from wind, according to ISO-New England’s real time dashboard — largely due to Vineyard Wind.
The other projects targeted on Monday are Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind off New York, and Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut.
“Nobody has ever seen the executive branch take a hatchet to a particular industry like this executive has with offshore wind,” said Travis Annatoyn, who served as deputy solicitor for energy and mineral resources at the US Department of the Interior during the Biden administration. “It’s remarkable, even relative to the administration’s actions on other renewable energy sources.”
In addition to escalating the administration’s efforts to thwart the industry, the decision to pause the lease on a project that is already delivering power to the grid marks a radical departure from legal precedent.
With this step, some of the region’s most promising clean energy projects — including Vineyard Wind, which has previously overcome delays during the first Trump administration as well as lawsuits from wind opponents, in addition to a catastrophic turbine blade collapse last year — are thrown into new turmoil. Monday’s announcement comes just weeks after a federal judge in Massachusetts vacated Trump’s day-one executive order that had blocked wind energy projects.
Like Vineyard Wind, the other projects affected by Monday’s decision had leases that were awarded and had been vetted by the Biden administration.
In making the decision to pause the leases, the Interior Department said unclassified reports from the US government have long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference called “clutter.” According to the Interior Department, that clutter can obscure legitimate moving targets and generate false targets near the wind projects.
A 2022 report by the National Academy of Sciences found that the risk of turbines interfering with radars is real, however it determined that it was manageable. And in a December 2024 letter to Revolution Wind developer Ørsted, the Department of Defense found the construction of that project would have no “adverse impacts to DoD missions in the area.”
“There is no statutory authority for a blanket freeze on five leased projects that have already been through extensive analysis including coordination with the Department of Defense on the security issues,” said Patrick Parenteau of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Vineyard Wind was halfway complete as of September, with the expectation that it would be complete by the end of the year, with 62 turbines generating enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts, according to the developer. That’s enough to meet 5.5 percent of the state’s energy demand.
Revolution Wind, meanwhile, would generate enough power for 350,000 homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Together, these two projects represent a cornerstone of how the region will transition to clean energy as fossil fuel power plants are retired.
The pausing of the leases puts all of that in question, while raising uncertainties about Massachusetts’ ability to meet its emissions reductions commitments to tackle climate change, as well as the region’s ability to meet its energy needs.
“These projects are among the biggest sources of new, US electricity generation. They are a big deal,” said Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts. She added that the move is “contrary to any pretense of caring about energy affordability, American competitiveness, working people, or the rule of law.”
A representative for Vineyard Wind did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The playbook is obvious,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. “The feds want to break the finances of these projects and deter developers from even thinking of starting something new.”
It also comes as a crushing blow to the thousands of workers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts employed by the industry, Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, said in an emailed statement. “The result of these actions remains the same: Workers lose hours, families face uncertainty, and energy prices stay high,” he said.
Antonio Gianfrancesco, a union laborer working on Revolution Wind, said in a statement, “We trained for these jobs, we followed every rule, and we’re doing the work right. We just want to keep working.”
This latest move comes after months of escalating attacks on the wind industry, which had been poised for a major boom before Trump returned to office. It is also the first time Trump has stopped construction on a project already delivering power, officials said.
Even before taking office, Trump had made it clear that he planned to gut the industry, which he has said is expensive and inefficient, while also repeating unproven claims that offshore wind installations kill whales. Trump has also repeatedly called wind turbines “ugly.”
Since taking office, he has issued an executive order to pause leasing and permitting of offshore wind, canceled funds for wind-related port infrastructure, ordered other projects to stop construction, and directed agencies to find ways to hamstring the industry.
For two of the projects targeted on Monday — Revolution Wind and Empire Wind — this is not the first time the Trump administration has halted work.
In August, the administration ordered a work stop at Revolution Wind, then an 80-percent complete offshore wind development in Rhode Island, citing national security concerns. A federal judge in late September allowed the work to restart pending the government’s review.
Earlier in the year, the administration stopped work at New York’s Empire Wind 1 project, though construction resumed following several meetings between Governor Kathy Hochul and the Trump administration. According to the administration, Hochul had shown a willingness to “move forward on critical pipeline capacity” — an about-face following New York’s past resistance to building more fossil fuel pipelines.
Hochul’s office, however, said that no deals related to a gas pipeline were made.
Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director for the advocacy group the Acadia Center, called the decision Monday an unjustified attack by this administration on clean and cheap electricity.
“The end result will be higher energy costs for ratepayers and higher profits for fossil fuel companies and utilities,” he said.
Edward Fitzpatrick of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com.