Offshore Wind Stop-Work Orders are Costing Consumers, Delaying Needed Electricity

­At a time when the administration claims the U.S. is facing a nationwide energy emergency and consumers are increasingly concerned about rising electricity costs, its efforts to stop five large offshore wind projects under construction along the Atlantic Coast could cost consumers billions of dollars and keep much-needed new electricity off the grid.

Although four of the projects have  resumed work after temporary wins in court, the late December stop-work orders were only the latest salvo in a series of steps apparently designed to cripple the nascent offshore wind industry through policy reversals, triggering financial losses and likely making future projects un-investable.

The latest orders, on Dec. 22, covered five projects, all of which are 40% or more complete. Vineyard Wind had just one turbine remaining to be installed and has been delivering power to the New England grid since the fall. Together, these offshore projects would add 5,838 megawatts (MW) of new generation capacity to eastern power markets in the next two years—a significant addition that cannot be matched by supply chain-constrained gas resources. The five projects are Dominion Energy’s 2,600 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW), and four others off the coast of New York and New England: Sunrise Wind, 924 MW; Empire Wind, 810 MW; Vineyard Wind 1, 800 MW; and Revolution Wind, 704 MW.

The strong performance of the three smaller existing offshore wind farms has proven these new projects can reliably produce a significant amount of electricity. The projects under construction may perform even better, since they will have taller, more efficient turbines. IEEFA looked at capacity factors, a key measure of performance, for the six months from November 2024 through April 2025, when the wind blows the strongest. Capacity factors show how much of a facility’s potential electricity generation is actually produced.

The newest of the three facilities, the 132 MW South Fork wind project that came online in March 2024, recorded an average 53% capacity factor for the six-month period. By comparison, the average coal plant in the United States produced power at just 46% of its potential during the same six months, and the average wind farm (all but three on land) had a 39% capacity factor.

An even better performance of 57.5% was realized during this six-month period by two 6 MW test turbines installed for Dominion Energy’s CVOW project. Located 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, they were the first wind turbines ever installed in U.S. federal waters when they came online in 2020.

That reliability was underscored by Dominion in its legal briefing contesting its stop-work order: “Offshore wind, particularly along the Atlantic seaboard, is a highly reliable energy source. The turbines are out at sea and hundreds of feet up in the air, where the wind is fast and almost constant. This consistent power generation helps stabilize the grid by providing a reliable source of energy, especially during peak demand periods.”

According to Dominion’s court filing, the company’s new U.S.-built installation vessel, the Charybdis, was on location at the site loaded with the material to complete construction of the first four turbines when the stop-work order was released. All 176 of the monopile bases at CVOW have been finished and are ready for tower and turbine installation. After a preliminary court win on Jan. 16, Dominion’s ship was back at work the next day.

The administration’s order threatens to prevent power from flowing into its grid early this year and for the project to be fully operational by the end of 2026, the company said. The three-week stoppage cost more than $5 million a day, with further delay to lead to “far greater harm to the project.” Dominion, which now shares ownership of CVOW with infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak, pointed out that $8.9 billion already has been invested in CVOW, which has a total projected cost of $11.2 billion. Those costs will not disappear if the project is cancelled, which would force customers to pay for power they are not getting.

In addition, replacement power, likely gas-fired, would cost customers an additional $3 billion over the first 10 years, the company estimated. Additional costs from the construction stoppage, which it said could total hundreds of millions of dollars, ultimately will be passed on to ratepayers.

Dominion, a utility serving 3.6 million customers in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, rejected the purported national security concerns that prompted the stop-work order. “[The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s] order comprises a single page, identifies no specific concerns and provides no supporting documentation … CVOW’s potential effects, including on national security, have been thoroughly studied and been largely avoided or resolved. Defendants have proffered no changed evidence to justify interruption of CVOW construction, and none exists.”

New England and New York are also close to getting more power from offshore projects.

The most advanced project is the 800 MW Vineyard Wind 1, located about 14 miles south of Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard. In a Jan. 15 filing seeking to have the administration’s stop-work order lifted—which a judge granted Jan. 27—the project’s developers said that it was already delivering as much as 572 MW of power to the New England grid. Avangrid Renewables, a unit of Spanish energy firm Iberdrola, and private equity firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners pointed out that only one more of the project’s 62turbines, along with 11 sets of blades, remained to be installed and that full commercial operation had been expected in March. The companies said they have invested more than $4.5 billion in the project and that the work stoppage was costing them $2 million a day.

New England was already setting new wind power records with the help of this project. On Dec. 12, 2025, wind generated 37,310 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, or 10.8% of the region’s power demand. That was the fifth record in 2025 — all set since the beginning of October.

Revolution Wind (704 MW), which was reported to be 87% complete at the time of the stop-work order, was expected to be finished in mid-February with power flowing to Connecticut and Rhode Island by mid-2026. Project owners Ørsted, a major European wind developer, and Skyborn Renewables, a unit of private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners, were granted a court order to resume work on Jan. 12. Orsted said the stoppage cost almost $1.5million a day.

Power from these two projects is vital for regional reliability. ISO-New England, the grid operator for the six-state region, said in a statement issued following the administration’s imposition of the stop-work orders: “These projects are particularly important to system reliability in the winter when offshore wind output is highest and other forms of fuel supply are constrained. While ISO-NE forecasts enough generation capacity is available for the current season, canceling or delaying these projects will increase costs and risks to reliability in our region.”

Empire Wind (810 MW, 54 turbines) and Sunrise Wind (924 MW,84 turbines), are two projects intended to supply power to New York state’s grid.

Work on Empire Wind has now resumed, after its developer, Equinor, received a preliminary injunction on Jan 15. Located south of Long Island, N.Y., and east of New Jersey, all the turbine foundations have been installed. Equinor describes the construction as 60% complete. But while work was stopped, the company warned that it could be forced to cancel the project unless at-sea work could continue soon due to scheduling issues with the vessel responsible for turbine installation at the site.

Empire Wind had already been hit with a stop-work order in April 2025. The order was lifted by federal regulators a month later, but the stoppage caused the company to write off almost $1 billion for its U.S. offshore wind projects. To date, Equinor said in its filing, the company has invested $4billion in the project, which was on schedule to enter commercial operation in2027. Cancellation would waste that investment, plus cost the company an estimated additional $1.2 billion in contract termination and dismantlement fees. As in New England, failure to complete the project would not just harm Equinor’s bottom line— it also would undercut reliability and raise costs across New York.

Work at Sunrise Wind, another Ørsted project, has yet to resume work as of Jan. 27 as it awaits its own court ruling. The project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard was at least 45% complete at the time of the Dec.22 stop-work order. In a Jan. 6 court filing to lift the order, the company said that 44 of the 84 turbine foundations had been installed, and that the stoppage is costing more than $1 million a day. Previously, Ørsted said it was focusing on completing installation of the power export cables and energization of the offshore converter station, with a goal of completion in 2027. A hearing on allowing work to resume is expected on Feb. 2, according to a court scheduling document.

Delaying these projects only raises costs for electricity consumers and keeps needed new generation capacity off the grid. More broadly, the administration’s actions undermine the faith of project developers of any energy resource in the credibility of the federal government decisions, a point IEEFA has made previously.

As Equinor cautioned in its filing: "Besides wasting time and money and imperiling livelihoods, the suspension order fundamentally undermines the public interest in a predictable government permitting process that the private sector can rely on in making large investments in the US economy, including potentially undermining the willingness of large banks to provide necessary financing for complex infrastructure projects, not just for renewable energy projects, but for oil and gas developments and other infrastructure too.”

If a national energy emergency truly exists, the administration should be doing everything it can to complete these projects as quickly as possible. Continued delays could cost consumers billions of dollars, worsen the current electricity affordability problem, and keep needed power off the grid.