Revolution Wind Is Already Powering New England — Now Trump's Interior Is Challenging Its Approval a Third Time

Revolution Wind has crossed a milestone that once seemed uncertain: all 65 of its turbines are in the water and the offshore array is delivering electricity to New England’s grid. Yet the fight over the project is not over. The Interior Department has asked a federal court to remand the wind farm’s construction and operations plan approval back to the agency for a fresh review — the administration’s third attempt to disrupt a project that is already operating.

The filing, dated October 9, does not shut down the turbines or pull the permit. Instead, it inserts another legal step into a 704-megawatt (MW) development that has already weathered two earlier federal attempts to halt construction. Revolution Wind is still expected to reach full commercial operation later this year, and the request now sits with a judge who has twice sided with the project’s developers.

• Third time around: Interior’s latest move arrives inside a 2024 lawsuit brought by the anti-wind group Green Oceans, which challenged federal approvals for Revolution Wind and the nearby South Fork Wind. The department now wants the court to reconsider whether the original approval properly weighed the project’s effects on other ocean uses, including fishing and recreation, under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act — a noticeably different argument from the national security rationale used in earlier attempts.
• Legal scorecard: Interior ordered work stopped in August 2025, then targeted the project again in December alongside four other offshore wind farms. Court injunctions allowed construction to resume each time, and US District Judge Royce Lamberth — who called the government’s conduct “arbitrary and capricious” in both 2025 and 2026 rulings — will again decide the next step.
• What’s at stake for ratepayers: Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection estimates that by 2028 Revolution Wind will cut wholesale electricity market costs for New England by roughly $500 million a year. The $6.2 billion project began delivering power on March 13, 2026, and is designed to supply more than 350,000 homes and businesses under fixed-price, 20-year agreements with utilities in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
• State pushback: Connecticut officials fired back on October 14. Governor Ned Lamont said reopening an approved project contradicts the administration’s own messaging on permitting reform, while Attorney General William Tong called the move nonsensical and said the state is ready to return to court alongside Ørsted.

Why It Matters

The timing is awkward for the administration. Revolution Wind is no longer a theoretical proposal fighting for permits — it is a live power source feeding the regional grid, and its output is arriving as New England grapples with energy cost and supply pressures. Reopening an approval after construction is complete sends a signal to developers and lenders that even operating projects can be pulled back into regulatory limbo, which is precisely the kind of uncertainty that raises financing costs for future infrastructure.

For now, nothing changes at sea: the turbines keep spinning while the court weighs Interior’s request. But the outcome will shape how much legal risk developers price into the next wave of offshore wind, and whether federal approvals are treated as durable commitments or provisional ones.