Virginia Beach wind farm spared from Trump order, but future projects could be delayed, experts say – Virginia News

“This will have an effect on all future leases,” said Eileen Wall, director of the offshore energy program for the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Under Monday’s executive order, the Trump administration will freeze all offshore wind leasing in federal waters, in addition to suspending the permit and approvals for any wind project, both onshore and offshore. The order notes that “nothing in this withdrawal affects rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas.” That includes the 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind project that began construction off the coast of Virginia Beach last year.

However, the order directs the Secretary of the Interior to review the environmental, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or modifying such leases, determining any legal basis for such termination and submitting a report to the President.

Wall said the language of the order appears to indicate a willingness to continue beyond existing leases. However, she noted that speaking up is one thing, while “having the legal basis to actually do it is another.”

In response to a question about whether the Trump administration would seek to change the lease for the Virginia Beach wind farm, Dominion spokesman Jeremy Slayton pointed to comments made by Trump’s nominee for interior secretary, Doug Burgum. Burgum said during a Jan. 16 hearing on existing projects that “if they make sense and they are already law, then they will go forward.”

“CVOW clearly meets this standard,” Slayton said in an email.

Grayson Holmes, senior Virginia attorney for the Southern Environmental Center, said going after a project like the Virginia Beach Wind Farm could be an uphill battle. Dominion installed 78 of 176 monopile turbine foundations last year before halting construction for the season. Construction will restart in May after whale migration season.

Still, Holmes said the executive order could delay two dominating projects years from construction: a 40,000-acre site near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in the Outer Banks that Avangrid bought in 2024; and a 176,505-acre lease, also near a Virginia Beach lease last summer.

“They’re on hold for now so they can do that kind of assessment,” Holmes said.

Woll also worried that the executive order would affect economic development efforts in Hampton Roads to attract the companies that make the parts for the huge offshore wind turbines. A representative of submarine cable company LS Greenlink told the Virginian Pilot earlier that he saw no threat to the company from the Trump administration because the planned Chesapeake facility would not be completed until 2028. Another development official hoped Trump would change his mind, given his goal of bringing back American manufacturing jobs.

Trump has waged a war of words against wind turbines since he failed to block a wind installation near a planned golf course near the Scottish city of Aberdeen in 2015, without evidence, claimed the installations were killing birds and whales and bewitched how much energy of energy The sources of production costs.

One of three conservative organizations suing Dominion seeking to stop construction of the Virginia Beach Wind Farm applauded the executive orders. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute said in a statement that the orders backed away from former President Joe Biden’s “uneven climate projects” and rolled back restrictions on fossil fuel development.

The Heartland Institute, along with several other conservation groups, has argued in court that the wind farm poses a danger to endangered species in the North Atlantic right whale. A judge denied a temporary injunction that would have halted construction in a ruling in May, and the case continues.