Trump Is Gonna Cave On Offshore Wind In 5…4…3…

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…JK! US President Donald Trump will never cry surrender in the war against offshore wind turbines. The President was burned once before, when a wind farm arose in Aberdeen Bay in Scotland, within view of a Trump-branded golf course back in the early 2000’s. Never again! The President has taken extreme measures to prevent such blight from tainting the shores of the United States. Nevertheless, scores of the pesky oversized pinwheels have already eluded the Trump chopper, and many more are on the way.

Massive 2.6 Gigawatt Offshore Wind Farm, Coming Right Up

The latest news concerns CVOW, the 2.6-gigwatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project under the wing of the leading utility Dominion. As the name of the project indicates, CVOW sits in the Atlantic Ocean about 24 nautical miles (28 land miles) off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

CVOW began taking shape during Trump’s first turn around the Oval Office, and construction was well under way when his second term began on January 20, 2025.

Immediately upon taking office, Trump abruptly suspended the offshore wind lease program administered by the Department of the Interior. He also ordered spurious re-reviews of offshore projects that were already in the permitting pipeline, and he had the Department of Justice administer a legally questionable buy-back program to prevent activity from stirring among other lease holders. In addition, he had the Interior Department issue multiple emergency orders aimed at stopping five offshore projects off the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts, where construction work was already well under way.

So far, though, only one part of the effort has stuck. Last year a federal judge affirmed that any President, Trump or not, has the authority to stop issuing new offshore leases. However, the same judge decided there is no blanket authority to suspend offshore leases that are already in the permitting process. The buy-back program is also in litigation, with critics raising questions about the funds used to pay off lease holders among other issues.

Additionally,  the Interior Department failed to convince multiple federal judges that the emergency orders had any merit. Work has continued on all five Atlantic coast projects, including CVOW.

CVOW began delivering its first kilowatts to shore in March, and Dominion recapped its progress on the wind farm in its Q3 report on October 30. As handily summarized by the news organization Maritime Executive, the project currently clocks in at 85% complete. All of the main turbine components — nacelles, towers, and blades — for the wind farm’s 176 offshore wind turbines have been fabricated. Forty-four have been fully installed so far. With a 45th coming any day now, the wind farm currently hosts 640 megawatts out of the 2,600 megawatt total.

Where’s The Fire?

Since Trump declared an “Energy Emergency” in January of 2025, it’s fair to ask why he has spent so much time, energy and taxpayer dollars to crush an entire domestic energy industry. After all, if one was not reading too closely between the lines of the declaration, the new energy policy is little more than a rehash of former President Barack Obama’s “All Of The Above” energy policy. As further embellished by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the new version specifically taps multiple zero and low-emission energy resources for support including nuclear energy, biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy, just like Obama did, along the emerging field of marine energy, which was barely a speck on the horizon while Obama was in office.

Energy storage, and the critical minerals needed in the clean tech industry, have also been gathered up in a Trumpian embrace.

Conspicuously absent, however, are the two most abundant, economical, and easily accessible domestic energy resources, namely, wind and solar.

If there really was an energy emergency…oh, never mind! Despite Trump’s complaints, offshore wind is a mature industry with a vigorous supply global supply chain and support equipment, as deftly illustrated by the CVOW project. In the October 30 report, Dominion noted that it takes only about two days for an offshore construction vessel to install a wind turbine on its foundation.

While the offshore wind construction timetable is subject to weather delays, Dominion also stated that the project is on schedule — despite any further delays related to last year’s stop-work order.

Speaking of the stop-work order, CVOW was conspicuously excluded from previous rounds of stop-work orders impacting the four other Atlantic coast wind farms under construction in 2025. If you’re guessing that Virginia’s Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin, had a hand in that decision, drop a note in the discussion thread. Youngkin publicly supported the CVOW project but he was term-limited out of office last year. A stop-work order would have put an embarrassing crimp in his next-step political plans. The order came down only after Election Day 2025, after the Democratic candidate, Abigail Spanberger, won the post.

So Much Winning For Offshore Wind

In a classic case of karma biting back, CVOW is a  more efficient and economical project than initially envisioned. A round of delays during Trump’s first term in office gave Dominion an opportunity to redesign the project with next-generation wind turbines. Those delays also enabled Dominion to take advantage of a new generation of turbine installation vessels that are purpose-built to cut offshore construction costs.

The results speak for themselves. In its October 30 report, Dominion indicated that CVOW costs were still consistent with its capital budget, even accounting for the cost of last year’s stop-work order and costs related to Trump’s tariff wars.

“The estimates on the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) also continue to fall,” Maritime Executive summarized. “After starting with a forecasted range of $80-$90 per MWh, and adjustments for changes after the change in administrations, they have lowered the LCOE to $62, down from an estimate of $83 presented in August” (LCOE is a calculation that provides a common ground for comparing costs among different forms of power generation).

Maritime Executive further reported that Dominion expects to save its ratepayers about $5 billion on fuel over the first 10 years of operation.

Trump’s war on wind has also petered out elsewhere. The Revolution Wind project off the coasts of Connecticut and Massachusetts has also been a target of  multiple stop-work orders over the past two years, with the latest hammer coming down just two weeks ago, when the 704-megawatt wind farm was almost complete.

Revolution Wind is now fully operational, joining the nearby Vineyard Wind project which also endured multiple attacks from Trump. As reported by public radio station WBUR, the savings from Revolution Wind is expected to ripple out through New England, saving $500 million for ratepayers in the region every year.

As for the domestic offshore wind industry writ large, the US lost thousands of onshore supply chain jobs all around the US in addition to job losses related to portside and offshore operation. However, the trade organization Oceantic Network is already prepping for a comeback. “The road to recovery for the embattled American offshore wind industry starts today with a new political mandate to tackle the affordability crisis,” Oceantic President and CEO Liz said in a public statement celebrating the Republican Party’s crushing defeat in the 202y midterm elections.

Photo: The offshore wind construction vessel Charybdis can install wind turbines at Virginia’s CVOW wind farm in just two days (cropped; courtesy of Dominion via CleanTechnica archive).