The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is set to reconsider permits for the 2.8GW Atlantic Shores offshore wind project after a legal ruling last week. This could put up to 20GW of approved US offshore wind capacity in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
The US offshore wind sector is poised for a challenging end to 2026 as nearly 20GW of approved and permitted projects are now under threat from the Trump administration.
President Trump has been clear about his desire to bring the offshore wind sector to a stop, and has pursued this goal aggressively since his inauguration on 20th January 2025. His approach has included a freeze on leases and permitting for new offshore wind farms in US waters; stoppages for construction-stage projects on national security grounds; and a drive to buy back leases from offshore wind developers.
This month, the Trump administration’s anti-offshore wind campaign gained legal backing that could cause difficulties for the 20GW of projects that are already permitted. On 10th August, a federal court in Washington DC ruled the US Government’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) could review the construction permit for the 2.8GW Atlantic Shores scheme off the coast of New Jersey, which is being developed by EDF.
The project has faced opposition from non-profit group Save Long Beach Island, which represents individuals and organisations with ties to New Jersey’s Long Beach Island in the Atlantic Ocean. The group has brought legal action complaining that decision-makers at federal and state level rushed approvals for the project, while failing to conduct enough due diligence on key environmental, economic and logistical issues.
It said that the Department of the Interior’s BOEM had, under the Biden administration, rushed decision-making to approve the project on 1st October 2024. The judgement by District Judge Jia Cobb on 10th August 2026, in the District of Columbia, ruled that BOEM had the discretion to review its decision to approve the project after failing to “comply with various statutes and regulations” previously.
This is a significant ruling as it enables BOEM to reopen its decision to approve the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for Atlantic Shores, and may give it power to reconsider permits for the 20GW of other approved offshore wind developments. The industry will watch nervously.
The ruling that suggests mistakes were made with the Environmental Impact Statements, which might have “understated or obfuscated impacts that may have been improperly weighed”; and found that US Congress could not limit BOEM’s ability to reconsider the COP for Atlantic Shores. The developer asked for a 120-day deadline for the completion of this work.
This is an important judgement because it appears to hand power to the Trump administration to delay or derail existing offshore wind projects. Some lawyers, such as Troutman Pepper Locke counsel Josh Kaplowitz, have questioned the move to ‘remand’ the project, which is where a federal court can send an approved permit back to BOEM for reconsideration, because it should not be possible to remand projects if there is “bad faith”.
Kaplowitz suggests that the Trump administration’s repeated moves to curtail offshore wind in 2025 and 2026 suggest there is bad faith, and called the judgement “surprising”. This comes at the end of a difficult year for US offshore wind, but there have been occasional bright spots.
Major payouts to offshore developers
The US offshore wind sector received a major boost in early 2026.
In December 2025, the Department of the Interior announced that the leases for the five large offshore wind projects under construction would be immediately paused: Coastal Virginia (2.6GW), Empire Wind 1 (810MW), Revolution Wind (704MW), Sunrise Wind (924MW) and Vineyard Wind 1 (800MW). Work restarted on all these projects between January and February 2026 after judges found against the stop-work orders
Since then, the Trump administration’s efforts have shifted to shutting down the offshore wind sector by paying developers nearly $4bn to walk away from leases at 12 projects. This has been successful for the administration.
In March, TotalEnergies received $1bn to hand back two leases; in April, Golden State Wind and Bluepoint Wind agreed deals worth $900m to end their leases; Invenergy secured a $765m settlement to walk away from four leases in June; and, also in June, Duke Energy received $129m to hand back the lease for Carolina Long Bay. Finally, on 7th August, RWE said it had reached a $1.2bn deal to walk away from three leases.
Effectively, developers are being incentivised with both carrot and stick. The ‘carrot’ is multi-million dollar deals to walk away, and the ‘stick’ is legal action that will receive a major boost from Judge Cobb’s decision in August.
There is industry activity to challenge these decisions. For example, in June, a coalition of seven attorney generals sued the Trump administration over the cancellation of the lease for the Attentive Energy project in the New York Bight.
Liz Burdock, president and CEO at offshore wind association Oceantic Network, said the Trump administration had levied an “unprecedented and unrelenting campaign of political interference despite billions in private investment, state commitments, and court rulings”. She called these moves an “attack on American workers, energy affordability, national security, and the states’ right to shape their own energy future”.
She may well be correct. But for a Trump administration hellbent on stopping offshore wind any way it can, the strategy of making big payouts to developers to walk away from leases has been highly effective. If BOEM has the power to reconsider permits for projects that are being built, that is another weapon in Trump’s arsenal.
Strategic communications, insight and events for the global energy transition.