Empire Wind project in New York resumes after Trump suspension
The large-scale offshore wind project off the coast of New York is back on track. The Trump administration, which halted construction last month and caused a dangerous shock wave across the entire industry, has now reversed its decision, allowing work on the Empire Wind farm south of Long Island to resume. The U.S. Department of the Interior lifted the suspension following pressure from Norwegian energy giant Equinor and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Earlier in May, Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables Americas, warned that the company might be forced to cancel the multi-billion-dollar project due to the suspension order. According to Morris, canceling the project would have cost Equinor $50 million per week.
Empire Wind 1 is a $5 billion, 810-megawatt offshore wind farm expected to power 500,000 homes and safeguard thousands of jobs, according to company estimates.
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A political trade-off on gas infrastructure
Good news? Not entirely. The deal that cleared the way for Empire Wind may also revive the controversial Constitution Pipeline in the Northeast, Reuters reports. Originally designed to transport natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York, the pipeline was canceled in 2020 after strong opposition from New York lawmakers and environmental groups.
Now, Constitution is making a comeback, partly backed by Democrats who once opposed it. With energy prices impacting low-income communities, some officials are shifting positions in an attempt to secure votes—particularly among Black-majority neighborhoods in the Boston area. These communities played a role in Trump’s gains during the November 2024 election.
Trump’s stance on offshore wind
In January, Trump banned lease auctions and permitting for new offshore wind projects and ordered a review of all existing developments. When the Department of the Interior issued the suspension order in April, Equinor had already invested $2.7 billion in Empire Wind and completed half of its onshore operations facility in Brooklyn.
Equinor, historically focused on oil, has been diversifying in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine. Installation of the project’s 54 offshore turbines off the New York coast had been scheduled to begin this month.
Trump has opposed wind farms since taking office, but the Empire Wind suspension was the first action directly targeting an active, large-scale project. Halting it would have jeopardized the future of offshore wind in the United States. Even before the suspension, financial challenges were slowing the rollout of new projects. Without intervention, the Biden-era goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 would have become unattainable.
More critically, freezing Empire Wind signaled that the Trump administration could block other existing projects at any time. Faced with mounting uncertainty, many developers were on the verge of scrapping their offshore wind plans.
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