Sunrise Wind offshore windfarm secures injunction enabling it to restart work

The suspension order on Sunrise Wind was one of five US offshore windfarms to be hit with stop-work orders by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

After reviewing classified information, DC District Judge Lamberth said BOEM’s action was ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ He agreed that irreparable harm standards were met, given the loss of specialised vessels that would cause a ‘cascade of delays’, preventing the project from meeting its obligations.

Sunrise Wind, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ørsted, said the court’s action will allow the Sunrise Wind project to restart immediately while an underlying lawsuit challenging the order progresses. Sunrise Wind said it will determine how it may be possible to work with the US administration to achieve an expeditious and durable resolution.

The project will resume construction work as soon as possible, with safety as the top priority, to deliver affordable, reliable power to the State of New York. Sunrise Wind is 45% complete and set to provide 924 MW of power generation to New York. The project’s supply chain stretches across 34 states.

Responding to the judgement, Aegir Insights lead analyst for the Americas, Signe Sørensen, said, “Sunrise Wind’s win shows that even the administration’s most potent weapon, national security, couldn’t give a proper foundation for suspending offshore wind leases. 

“While these consecutive wins in court don’t preclude the administration from issuing more stop-work orders, it makes it very obvious that they are part of a politically motivated campaign against offshore wind with no rational or legal basis. Any stop-work order to follow will have the odds stacked against it from the beginning and would likely be overturned in court very fast.

“We maintain the expectation that the five projects will be built, but that it is unlikely other projects move materially forward during the rest of President Trump’s term. We do, however, expect that project development in the US will eventually pick back up, as the northeastern US remains a natural offshore wind market, due to high power demand and few options to build out renewable energy sources on land, as either population density or grid often constrains that.

“The judge was again quite clear in his language and also referenced that three other judges had come to the same conclusion as he had previously for Revolution Wind. He also noted that the cases are all very similar, and again, as he did for Revolution Wind, remarked that the administration failed to explain how the particular project in question endangered national security and why it had not so far worked with the project to mitigate those risks.”