Says Edict Would Affect Pending Projects in New York
By Hank Russell
New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 17 other attorneys general on May 5 in filing a lawsuit to end what they call the Trump administration’s arbitrary and indefinite halt on new wind energy development across the country.
On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a sweeping presidential directive suspending all federal approvals for wind energy projects, threatening to undermine a critical source of clean energy and job growth in the United States. As a result, countless wind energy project applications are now frozen. James and the coalition argue that this blockade on all wind energy projects is unlawful and will be seeking a preliminary injunction to immediately stop the administration from enforcing the freeze while litigation proceeds.
As previously reported in Long Island Life & Politics, after President Donald Trump announced that he ordered a stop-work order, Equinor, a Norwegian company, recently announced that all activity on the Empire Wind 1 Project — located off the coast of the City of Long Beach — will be suspended pending a review from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
LILP also reported that the BOEM has ordered Empire Offshore Wind LLC “to halt all ongoing activities related to the Empire Wind Project on the outer continental shelf to allow time for it to address feedback it has received, including from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), about the environmental analyses for that project,” Acting Interior Secretary Walter D. Kruickshank wrote in a letter to Empire Secretary Matthew Brotmann.
James and the coalition assert that the president’s directive is at odds with years of bipartisan support for offshore and onshore wind energy projects, including during Trump’s first term. It also directly contradicts the president’s own Executive Orders issued on the same day, which declared a “national energy emergency,” singled out New York and several other states for the country’s lack of energy supply, and called for the expansion of most forms of domestic energy production, but not wind energy.
The AGs argue this unilateral halt on wind energy development is harming the states’ ability to provide reliable, affordable electricity to their residents. States have a responsibility to meet increasing electricity demand while also mitigating climate harms and reducing pollution caused by fossil fuels, they claim. In addition, the indefinite halt on federal approvals is already putting state investments and economic benefits from wind energy projects in jeopardy.
New York’s wind projects currently support over 4,400 jobs throughout the state and are expected to create more than 18,000 additional new jobs in the coming years. Those jobs will not materialize if these projects are halted. The administration’s indefinite blockade could leave billions of dollars in states’ clean energy investments stranded or underutilized and significantly harm their economic development.
This wind energy blockade is also impeding New York and other states’ ability to meet their energy and climate goals, James said. These are statutory targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, more specifically, meet target dates for electricity generated by wind power. New York’s Climate Law requires the state to obtain 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040.
James and the coalition warn that the halt on wind energy development will delay the replacement of fossil fuels with clean energy, a shift that will exacerbate climate, public health, and environmental harms to people across the nation and the globe. The administration’s blockade would derail key projects already under development, many of which are expected to power millions of homes and support tens of thousands of jobs.
The attorneys general also note that the risk of these harms to the industry and the states has risen sharply in recent weeks, as the Trump administration ordered a project off the coast of New York, which had already received federal approval, to immediately stop construction.
The AGs assert that the president is acting outside of his legal authority and has no statutory right to unilaterally shut down the permitting process. They are asking the court to intervene and rule the approval blockade unlawful, restoring the wind energy permitting process and protecting the wind energy industry long-term.
Joining James in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
“This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable, and affordable energy,” James said. “This arbitrary and unnecessary directive threatens the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments, and it is delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet.”
In response, White House spokesperson said, ‘[The AGs] are using lawfare to stop the president’s popular energy agenda,” according to the Associated Press. “The American people voted for the president to restore America’s energy dominance, and Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda.”