Orsted sues to save offshore wind farm from Trump administration axe

The Danish renewable energy company Orsted sued the Trump administration on Thursday in a bid to restart construction on an offshore wind farm in New England that the government has blocked.

The Interior Department abruptly ordered Orsted on Aug. 22 to halt construction on Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut. The fully permitted project is 80% complete and would provide enough power for more than 350,000 homes across both states.

Orsted asked the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to set aside the stop-work order, dismissing it as arbitrary, capricious, unlawful and “issued in bad faith.” Orsted and its partner Skyborn Renewables have already invested $5 billion in Revolution Wind, they said.

The Trump administration’s action puts at risk billions of dollars in future revenue from the project, the companies said. Orsted and Skyborn would also face $1 billion in breakaway costs if the project is canceled, they said.

Orsted shares hit a record low on Aug. 25 in the wake of the stop-work order.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has justified the order on national security grounds and concerns that Revolution Wind will interfere with other uses of U.S. territorial waters. But Orsted said this justification is just a pretext, pointing to President Donald Trump’s long-standing animus toward wind power going back more than a decade.

“The President has apparent hostility towards offshore wind, including based on statements made on the campaign trail,” Orsted’s attorney told the court.

Revolution Wind has undergone extensive environmental and safety reviews over nearly a decade that cost more than $100 million, according to Orsted’s lawsuit. Federal agencies have uniformly concluded based on thousands of pages of data that the project is “environmentally sound, safe and consistent with federal law,” the company said.

CNBC has reached out to the White House for comment.

Trump has targeted the wind industry since his first day in office, when he issued an order that closed federal waters to new leases for offshore projects. But the renewable industry had hoped that the White House would allow permitted projects such as Revolution Wind to proceed.

Trump has escalated his attacks on the renewable energy industry in recent weeks. The president said his administration would not approve solar and wind projects two days before Revolution Wind was hit with the stop-work order.

And the Trump administration on Friday canceled $679 million in funding for a dozen infrastructure projects that support the offshore wind industry.