By Jen­na Out­calt
UConn Jour­nal­ism

New Eng­lan­ders deal with some of the high­est ener­gy costs in the coun­try, but the con­struc­tion of an off­shore wind farm promised low­er prices as well as new jobs for the region.  

Then came Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who had been feud­ing with the wind ener­gy indus­try since before he even entered pol­i­tics. He has accused wind farms of ruin­ing land­scapes and killing birds and whales and false­ly claimed their ener­gy is more expen­sive than oth­er tra­di­tion­al forms of ener­gy.  

How­ev­er, his oppo­si­tion to wind farms is also polit­i­cal.  

“He does­n’t like renew­able ener­gy — but he does­n’t like renew­able ener­gy only because he thinks that Democ­rats like it, and any­thing that Democ­rats like must be bad,” U.S. Sen. Chris Mur­phy, a Demo­c­rat from Con­necti­cut, said in an inter­view. 

Rev­o­lu­tion Wind, a 65-tur­bine wind farm off the coast of Con­necti­cut and Rhode Island, promised to bring 304 and 400 megawatts of clean ener­gy, respec­tive­ly, to the states. The project cat­alyzed a remod­el­ing of New London’s State Pier and was esti­mat­ed to cre­ate “more than 2,000 direct jobs across con­struc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, ship­build­ing, and oper­a­tions,” accord­ing to its web­site.  

But the wind farm quick­ly became a tar­get in Trump’s sec­ond term, with his admin­is­tra­tion halt­ing con­struc­tion and seek­ing to close it down as part of unprece­dent­ed exec­u­tive inter­fer­ence with state ener­gy projects. What ensued was a saga of legal bat­tles between the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­nies and states involved that probes the lim­it of a president’s pow­er to reverse deci­sions of pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds. 

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong said the Trump administration’s actions vio­lat­ed the Admin­is­tra­tive Pro­ce­dure Act and the government’s author­i­ty under the Out­er Con­ti­nen­tal Shelf Lands Act.  

“We’re ask­ing the court to step in right now, to rec­og­nize the irrepara­ble and imme­di­ate harm we are suf­fer­ing, and to stop the Trump Administration’s impul­sive and law­less over­reach,” Tong said in a Sep­tem­ber press release. 

 A fed­er­al judge allowed con­struc­tion on the wind farm to resume in fall 2025, but the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has vowed to con­tin­ue the fight against it.  

History of Revolution Wind 

Rev­o­lu­tion Wind began in 2018 with a call for renew­able ener­gy pro­pos­als. Con­necti­cut chose a pro­pos­al for an off­shore wind farm by Deep­wa­ter Wind, a com­pa­ny that was soon acquired by Dan­ish ener­gy com­pa­ny Ørst­ed. 

Onshore con­struc­tion began in 2023, mak­ing New Lon­don a cen­tral loca­tion for off­shore wind man­u­fac­tur­ing. 

“This will not only begin a new era of renew­able ener­gy in our state, but it also means that hun­dreds of in-demand jobs will be sup­port­ed in the New Lon­don region, bring­ing a pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic impact to the area and set­ting Con­necti­cut on a path to become the pre­mier com­mer­cial east coast hub for this sec­tor,” Con­necti­cut Gov. Ned Lam­ont said in a press release at the time. 

While envi­ron­men­tal advo­ca­cy groups and aca­d­e­mics praised off­shore wind as a key strat­e­gy in the bat­tle against cli­mate change, some groups rose in oppo­si­tion to the project, cit­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns about the con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of the wind tur­bines. 

One group, Green Oceans, empha­sized sea life health with a par­tic­u­lar focus on whales and the indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the ocean as its main rea­sons for oppos­ing the off­shore wind indus­try.  

“Main­tain­ing a healthy ocean and pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty is our best defense against cli­mate change,” Green Oceans stat­ed in a white paper. “To assume that a par­tic­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy will ben­e­fit cli­mate change with­out proof could lead to irre­versible harm.”  

Oth­er envi­ron­men­tal advo­cates, how­ev­er, dis­agreed with this rea­son­ing. 

Dar­rèll Brown, the vice pres­i­dent of Con­ser­va­tion Law Foun­da­tion in Rhode Island, said the biggest threat to the ocean is cli­mate change – which wind ener­gy helps mit­i­gate by low­er­ing reliance on fos­sil fuels. With­out off­shore wind ener­gy, “we’re putting our­selves behind the eight ball in terms of address­ing the need to reduce green­house gas emis­sions,” he said. 

“We will not be able to meet those goals if we don’t have off­shore wind,” Brown said. 

Nathaniel Trum­bull, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of geog­ra­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, said off­shore wind’s effi­ca­cy must be con­sid­ered in light of the glob­al cli­mate cri­sis.  

“Our way for­ward is renew­able ener­gy,” he said. “This is Connecticut’s best shot at ful­fill­ing some of our efforts to mit­i­gate and turn the page on ener­gy con­sump­tion.” 

Evan Ward, head of marine sci­ences at UConn, agreed. 

“We have to get a han­dle on cli­mate change. That’s the exis­ten­tial threat,” he said. “Any­thing we can do to mit­i­gate cli­mate change is good.” 

Indus­tries work­ing with off­shore wind con­struc­tion were also quick to come to its defense. Among those com­pa­nies was Thay­er­Ma­han, which was respon­si­ble for bub­ble cur­tain tech­nol­o­gy that damp­ened under­wa­ter con­struc­tion sounds to avoid dis­rupt­ing wildlife. Ali Halvord­son, the vice pres­i­dent for busi­ness oper­a­tions at Thay­er­Ma­han, said off­shore wind was hold­ing itself to a much high­er stan­dard than oth­er marine indus­tries, espe­cial­ly in terms of wildlife pro­tec­tion. 

“The off­shore wind indus­try has require­ments to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment, and one aspect of that is marine life,” Halvord­son said. “I would say that the off­shore wind indus­try is doing more than any oth­er indus­try to pro­tect the whales. It’s the only indus­try right now that has require­ments.” 

Although they empha­sized envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, local oppo­si­tion move­ments often had ties to larg­er fos­sil fuel inter­ests and con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks, accord­ing to a report from Brown University’s Cli­mate Devel­op­ment Lab called “Against the Wind.” Tim­mons Roberts, one of the authors, said although local groups weren’t always direct­ly fund­ed by these larg­er orga­ni­za­tions, they had ties to them through the infor­ma­tion they shared. 

“As we say in that report, they’re receiv­ing an infor­ma­tion sub­sidy,” Roberts said. “And that infor­ma­tion includes strate­gies and tac­tics, as well as talk­ing points and memes and social media posts, and on and on.” 

Nonethe­less, groups like Green Oceans, which denied any asso­ci­a­tion with fos­sil fuel inter­ests, some­times encour­aged sin­gle-issue vot­ing. Dur­ing the 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign — as tur­bines were being installed off­shore for the Rev­o­lu­tion Wind project — the group encour­aged vot­ers to sup­port Trump because of his promise to dis­man­tle the off­shore wind indus­try in the U.S. 

Trump’s attacks on wind energy 

Trump has a long his­to­ry of crit­i­ciz­ing wind tur­bines, accus­ing them of killing ani­mals, ruin­ing views and fail­ing to pro­vide con­sis­tent ener­gy. In 2015, he lost a legal bat­tle to pre­vent a wind farm near his golf course in Scot­land but vowed to “spend what­ev­er monies are nec­es­sary to see these huge and unsight­ly indus­tri­al wind tur­bines are nev­er con­struct­ed,” accord­ing to the BBC.  

When he vis­it­ed Scot­land in 2025, he expressed a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment. 

“You’re ruin­ing your coun­tries. I real­ly mean it. It’s so sad. You fly over and you see these wind­mills all over the place, ruin­ing your beau­ti­ful fields and val­leys and killing your birds. And if they’re stuck in the ocean, ruin­ing your oceans,” he said, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. 

On the first day of his sec­ond term in Jan­u­ary 2025, Trump made good on his promise to sti­fle the wind ener­gy indus­try. He issued an exec­u­tive order call­ing for the reeval­u­a­tion of off­shore wind projects. Although the exec­u­tive order pri­mar­i­ly blocked the use of ocean areas for future wind farms, it also addressed the con­struc­tion of wind farms that were already approved. 

“With respect to such exist­ing leas­es, the Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or, in con­sul­ta­tion with the Attor­ney Gen­er­al as need­ed, shall con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive review of the eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and envi­ron­men­tal neces­si­ty of ter­mi­nat­ing or amend­ing any exist­ing wind ener­gy leas­es, iden­ti­fy­ing any legal bases for such removal, and sub­mit a report with rec­om­men­da­tions to the Pres­i­dent,” the order states. 

Con­necti­cut joined a coali­tion chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of the exec­u­tive order in May.  

Then in August, fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors issued a stop-work order for Rev­o­lu­tion Wind that bor­rowed lan­guage from Trump’s exec­u­tive order. Rev­o­lu­tion Wind was already ful­ly per­mit­ted, and all state and fed­er­al fund­ing for it had been ful­ly allo­cat­ed. Con­struc­tion was about 80% com­plete, accord­ing to Ørst­ed. Tong and Rhode Island Attor­ney Gen­er­al Peter Neron­ha sued in fed­er­al court in Sep­tem­ber, seek­ing a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion against the stop-work order. 

The Trump administration’s strat­e­gy is to “break it all apart, blow it up so that the fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies can make as much mon­ey as they pos­si­bly can in the short term,” Tong said in an inter­view.

The law­suit is one of dozens of law­suits that Con­necti­cut has joined against fed­er­al actions since Trump took office, includ­ing sev­er­al involv­ing envi­ron­men­tal health.  

“Our strat­e­gy is to be a fire­wall and to sue where we can — stand up for clean air, clean water where we can,” Tong said. 

Because the Rev­o­lu­tion Wind project had gone through all the hur­dles and rig­or of being per­mit­ted, the fed­er­al government’s action was ille­git­i­mate, Tong said. If these ques­tions “had not been addressed, it would not have been per­mit­ted,” he said. 

A U.S. Dis­trict Court judge ruled on Sept. 22 in a par­al­lel case filed in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia by Ørst­ed that con­struc­tion of the project could con­tin­ue. 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion indi­cat­ed that they would con­tin­ue the legal fight against Rev­o­lu­tion Wind.  

“This will not be the final say on the mat­ter,” White House spokesper­son Anna Kel­ly said in response to the deci­sion, Politi­co report­ed. 

On Dec. 8, a fed­er­al judge ruled in favor of Con­necti­cut and the oth­er states chal­leng­ing Trump’s orig­i­nal exec­u­tive order.  

“Trump’s errat­ic attacks on wind ener­gy and his bizarre rants about wind­mills nev­er made any sense. He was going to jack up ener­gy costs for Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es, fur­ther our reliance on fos­sil fuels and for­eign oil, and throw work­ers off good jobs,” Tong said in a press release the day after the rul­ing. “We sued, we won, and I’m going to keep fight­ing to pro­tect Connecticut’s abil­i­ty to secure our own ener­gy future that makes sense for our costs and cli­mate.” 

Con­struc­tion on the wind farm con­tin­ued until Dec. 22, when the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or sus­pend­ed leas­es for five off­shore wind farms, includ­ing Rev­o­lu­tion Wind, say­ing it need­ed time to assess secu­ri­ty risks. Tong released a state­ment that same day say­ing this was an “even more law­less and errat­ic” attempt to stall the project. He said the state was look­ing at its legal options to stop the new attack on the wind farm. Con­necti­cut and Rhode Island filed a request for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion on Jan. 5.

UConn Jour­nal­ism stu­dents Patrick Boots, Emi­ly Markelon and Aman­da McCard con­tributed report­ing to this arti­cle.