Meet The Offshore Wind Project That Survived The Trump Chopper

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Last year US President Donald Trump tried mightily to stop five offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast. What’s not to like? Offshore wind farms generate clean electricity without taking up precious space on land, and all five of the projects were already deep into construction. Regardless, Trump tried. And failed. All five projects are still underway, including the massive, 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project under the umbrella of the leading US utility Dominion Energy.

2.6 Gigawatts Of Offshore Wind Are Coming, Trump Or Not

The CVOW project took shape slowly. Back in 2013, during Barack Obama’s second term in office, Dominion secured an offshore lease for the project, located about 27 miles off the coast of Virginia. The lease was administered by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a relatively new office of the US Department of the Interior.

Plans for the 176-turbine wind farm began to firm up over the ensuing years, beginning with a pilot project consisting of just two 6-megawatt turbines. The two turbines went into operation in 2020, producing enough electricity to power 3,000 typical homes.

That was during President Trump’s first term in office, raising the question of how the project managed to get off the ground considering Trump’s well known antipathy towards offshore turbines. Actually, CVOW was not the only offshore wind project to continue moving forward during Trump’s first term in office. Although the president delayed the Vineyard Wind offshore project in Massachusetts for a “review” during his first term, he and his enablers were unprepared to monkey-wrench the entire machinery of the BOEM. The office continued mapping out offshore lease areas and holding lease auctions, priming the pump for a fresh round of offshore wind activity when former President Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021.

Trump’s first Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, also had rather mixed feelings about the idea of choking off an entire, emerging domestic energy industry. By the time David Bernhardt took over the seat in 2019 and put the hammer down on Vineyard Wind, the wheels were already in motion.

Bernhardt or not, Vineyard eventually came out on top. The developers withdrew their application and resubmitted it after Biden became president, taking advantage of the delay to swap in new, more powerful turbines.

Bigger, Better Offshore Wind Turbines

All those extra years of preparation paid off for Dominion, too. The turbines occupying the CVOW site weigh in at 14.7 megawatts each, more than twice the size of the two piloted turbines. In 2020 Dominion tapped the global firm Siemens Gamesa to get the job done with its SG 14-222 Direct Drive offshore wind turbines. The turbines have a nameplate capacity of 14 megawatts and can be boosted up to 15 megawatts.

With the bigger, better turbines in hand, Dominion began pre-construction work on the full 176-turbine array in 2023. Even after Trump took office in January of 2025 and began wreaking havoc among other offshore projects along the Atlantic coast, work on CVOW continued apace.

CleanTechnica was among those taking note of CVOW’s untouchable status. There’s no real mystery behind it. In 2025, Republican Glenn Youngkin still held the Governor’s office in Virginia. He publicly promoted the project all throughout last year, helping to shield it against political interference. All of the other Atlantic Coast states with offshore projects in the pipeline have Democratic governors.

Meanwhile, Trump’s battle against offshore wind was much more effective the second time around, including stop-work orders against wind farms already under construction, specious pre-construction “reviews” of other projects in the pipeline, and a complete ban on issuing new offshore leases for wind farms.

The honeymoon for CVOW ended on Election Day 2025. Youngkin was term-limited out of office, and Virginia voters handed the governor’s mansion to Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. The seeds of destruction were sown on December 8, when a federal judge ruled that the so-called “reviews” of existing offshore leases were arbitrary, capricious, and illegal. Undeterred, on December 22 the Interior Department imposed an “emergency” stop-work order impacting CVOW along with Vineyard Wind (again), Revolution Wind (that’s the Rhode Island project), and two wind farms in New York, Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind.

That didn’t last long. Following court challenges in January, a series of federal judges suspended all five orders pending a final decision. Work has resumed on all five projects pending any appeals by the Trump administration.

More Clean Offshore Energy Opportunities Await The US

Despite the delay, Dominion is still on track to begin deliveries of electricity from an initial tranche of turbines in March, with the remainder to be installed later this year.

The delay came at a cost, though. In a report to shareholders last week, Dominion put the price tab at a whopping $228 million. “During the nearly month-long stoppage, Dominion racked up expenses from equipment storage, contractual penalties, an idle workforce and delays in using time-sensitive vessels,” public media station WHRO noted on February 24.

“Another $137 million was added to the project because of tariffs on materials such as steel,” WHRO added.

As for who’s gonna pay for all this, ratepayers, of course.

Meanwhile, in an odd twist of fate, the US Department of Energy continues to lay the groundwork for a fresh burst of energy development along the shores of the US. Yes, of course that includes oil and gas drilling, but the agency has also been moving ahead with grant programs that support the emerging field of marine energy, which includes ocean waves, currents, and tides as well as the natural movement of inland waterways.

The US marine energy industry is not likely to gather any notable steam for years after Trump leaves office on January 20, 2029  as scheduled — peacefully this time, one hopes. Globally, the marine energy field is only just reaching the cusp of a commercial breakthrough, and the US currently has only one commercial wave energy pilot project in operation.

When marine energy does take off, keep an eye on those Atlantic Coast wind turbines. Offshore advocates are already taking note of opportunities to piggyback wave energy converters and other offshore devices onto wind farms, reducing costs while significantly increasing overall power generation.

Photo: The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is one of five offshore projects to survive the Trump chopper, adding another 2.6 gigawatts to the nation’s clean power profile (cropped, courtesy of CVOW via CleanTechnica archives).