Posted on December 5, 2025
More than a year after the Biden administration issued the final permit for a pair of proposed offshore wind projects near Massachusetts, the Trump administration is trying to take it back.
On Tuesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to “remand,” or reconsider, its approval of the construction and operations plan for the projects, New England Wind 1 and 2. The plan is the last major permit an offshore wind project needs to begin construction.
The motion is the latest move by the Trump administration to target the offshore wind industry in the U.S., and it comes just a few weeks after a federal judge in a different, but similar, case ruled that the government could take a second look at the construction and operations plan it approved for SouthCoast Wind, a proposed wind project also near Massachusetts.
The federal government’s motion to reconsider New England Wind’s permit says its prior approval “may have” failed to account for all of the project’s impacts. The filing cited a relatively new interpretation of the federal law known as the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that changes the criteria to evaluate offshore wind projects.
“Agencies have inherent authority to reconsider past decisions and to revise or replace them,” the government’s lawyers wrote.
But Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, said this is not how the permitting process is supposed to work.
“Agencies are entitled to revisit their past determinations when they have a legitimate basis for doing so — like if there is new information or scientific knowledge has evolved,” she said. “But nothing like that has been the case here; nothing is new. This administration has just decided they don’t like wind and so they’re manufacturing a reason to pull back their prior approval.”
Losing the permit would be a huge blow for New England Wind 1, which has been stuck in limbo for months. While Massachusetts announced it would buy power from the 791-megawatt project last fall, the state and project developer Avangrid have delayed signing a power contract several times because of uncertainty for the industry in the Trump administration.
If built, New England Wind 1 would connect to land in Barnstable and provide enough electricity to power up to 400,000 homes. Avangrid had hoped to start construction this year out of a redeveloped port in Salem, though both the timeline for the wind project and the future of the port are now up in the air. In September, the Trump administration canceled a $34 million grant to help build a state-of-the-art offshore wind staging port on the site of a former coal plant in Salem.
New England Wind 2 is still in the early phases of development. All told, the pair of projects could generate enough electricity to power about a million homes in the region.
A spokesperson for Avangrid declined to comment on the government’s motion to rescind its projects’ permit. The company has until Jan. 16 to file an objection, after which it will be up to a judge to decide whether the permit can be re-opened.
The Trump administration filed the motion as part of a larger lawsuit about New England Wind’s permit. In March, a Nantucket-based anti-offshore wind group known as ACK for Whales sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, claiming the government violated federal laws like the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the National Historical Preservation Act when it approved the permit in July 2024.
This lawsuit gave the Trump administration an opening to try and overturn the Biden-era decision. Instead of defending the permit in court, the government is now effectively saying it agrees with the plaintiffs contention that the process was flawed and that the permit should be sent back to the agency for review.
ACK for Whales’ lawyer, Thomas Stavola Jr., called the government’s motion on Tuesday a “vindication,” adding that “the federal agencies are now recognizing what Plaintiffs have long argued, namely that the Project’s approvals are fatally flawed and violate numerous environmental statutes.”
While ACK for Whales claims the federal government rushed the permitting process for New England Wind 1 and 2, multiple federal agencies spent about four years evaluating the project. They examined its potential impact on the environment, the commercial fishing industry, marine mammals and any potential national security or navigation challenges it could create. Ultimately, they concluded that the environmental benefits of the wind farm outweighed any negative impacts.
If the government’s motion is successful and the judge allows the agency to reconsider the construction and operations plan, the agency will then have the opportunity to re-approve or deny the permit.
“We are really hopeful that if they go back, and they take a much harder look at how they reviewed this the first time, that they can come up with a better decision the second time,” said Amy DiSibio of ACK for Whales.
