A Dominion Energy employee looks at one of two wind turbines located 44 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach in the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 2023. The two wind turbines are part of the Virginia Coastal Offshore Wind Program pilot program.
Kendall Warner | Virginia Pilot | Tribune News Service | Getty Images
On Friday, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Farm will resume construction after a federal judge temporarily lifted the Trump administration’s moratorium on the project.
This is the largest offshore wind project under construction in the United States. dominion energythe owner and developer of , rose about 1% on the news.
In December, the Department of the Interior halted construction on five wind farms off the East Coast, including Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, citing national security concerns.
Judge Jamar Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday granted Dominion’s request for a preliminary injunction. Dominion argued in its lawsuit that Trump’s suspension was “arbitrary and illegal.”
“Our team is now focused on safely restarting operations to ensure CVOW can begin delivering critical energy in the coming weeks,” a Dominion spokesperson told CNBC in a statement Friday.
“While our legal challenge progresses, we will continue to seek a durable resolution to this matter through collaboration with the federal government,” the spokesperson said.
Dominion said in December that “an extended CVOW outage threatens grid reliability for some of the nation’s most critical combat, AI, and civilian assets.”
According to Dominion, the Virginia Coastal Offshore Wind project is a 176-turbine project that will provide enough power to power more than 600,000 homes. Transmission is expected to begin by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
The project will help meet the power needs of Northern Virginia, the world’s largest data center market. Data centers are placing an increasing strain on the power grid as they consume more power to train and run artificial intelligence applications.
The Trump administration tried to shut down four other offshore wind farms in December. They are Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts. Winds of revolution off the coast of Rhode Island. Sunrise winds off Long Island and New England. and Empire Wind 1, south of Long Island.
A federal judge this week allowed Revolution Wind and Empire Wind to resume construction.
