Sunrise Wind cable work begins; judge vacates Trump freeze on wind permits

As a federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order freezing all new wind-energy permits, two Long Island-centered projects continued to make advances and a third already in operation continues to feed the grid.

The ruling Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris found Trump’s January executive order freezing new wind-energy permits, leases and other authorizations "arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law" and vacated the order.

Trump’s January edict was the first official shot across the bow of the wind industry in his second term, pausing — as he had in his first term in office — new offshore wind projects while federal agencies studied the impacts. It had an immediate chilling effect for projects still in the planning stages.

But offshore wind-energy work, with one 43-day exception for a project stalled off Long Island in the spring, has continued in and around the East Coast.

Last week, work to install a 106-mile cable between Long Island and the site of an offshore wind array off New England began off Smith Point, as the developers of Sunrise Wind work toward a goal of providing power to the grid by mid-2027. All the project’s estimated 924 megawatts of energy, enough developer Orsted says to power about 600,000 homes, will come to Long Island’s grid.

A jack-up barge stationed just beyond the beach at Smith Point this week has begun sending the first length of cable to land before it begins the monthslong process of trenching and laying cable for the approximately 106 miles it will require to reach the site of the project’s 84 turbines.

Already, according to Meaghan Wims, a spokeswoman for the project, 44 turbine foundations have been installed in the waters off Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and the project is around 40% complete, she said. As Newsday has reported, most of the work for the land-based portion of the project was completed earlier this year by infrastructure company Haugland Group.

Access to Smith Point beach and marina will be maintained through cable-pulling operations, though a large section of the Smith Point County Park parking lot is fenced off for the work.

An adjacent Orsted project in the federal permit area called Revolution Wind, after a delay by the Trump administration, is advancing on schedule and is 85% complete, Wims said, with all 65 turbine foundations in place and 52 of 65 turbines installed. Revolution is expected to be in service by the second half of next year, she said.

"As New Yorkers face rising energy costs, we need more energy sources, not fewer," said New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the suit against the Trump administration’s executive order with 17 other states, said in a Monday statement. "Wind energy is good for our environment, our economy, and our communities. I am grateful the court stepped in to block the administration’s reckless and unlawful crusade against clean energy."

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Long Island’s first offshore wind farm, South Fork Wind, has been operating since last year, producing a peak of 59,195 megawatt-hours this past March and powering about 70,000 homes, LIPA said.

The Sunrise project and another closer to Long Island, Empire Wind, which will deliver its power to New York City at Brooklyn, are moving forward. Empire was scheduled to complete work on 54 offshore foundations this fall and begin installing towers and turbines next year, but it hit a roadblock after a new vessel it planned to use for the work was canceled.

"We are currently evaluating available options," said David Schoetz, a spokesman for Empire Wind developer Equinor, in an email Tuesday. There is "no concrete date on tower installation," he wrote. The company still expects to begin generating power from Empire Wind in late 2026, with full commercial operation in 2027, he said.

New York State had been seeking bids for a second generation of turbines proposed for the waters between New York and New Jersey called the New York Bight, but several of the projects, including Attentive Energy and Orsted’s Long Island Wind, withdrew from the bidding. Excelsior Wind, a project being developed by Vineyard Offshore, declined to comment last week when asked if its bid was active. Awards for the bidding, known as New York 5, were to be announced in November and contracts executed by October. A spokeswoman for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority said the solicitation is "ongoing."

While the Trump administration is likely to appeal Monday’s decision, the ruling emboldened wind-industry advocates after months of setbacks. "With this ruling behind us, projects can now be judged on their merits," said Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, in a statement. She called wind power a "key component" of the nation’s energy future, and "currently one of the most cost-effective ways to generate power."

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.