A judge in Norfolk on Friday ruled in favor of Dominion Energy, allowing the utility to restart construction on its offshore wind project after the federal government halted it late last year.
The Trump administration cited recently uncovered risks to national security when it issued a 90-day stop-work order on Dec. 22.
But U.S. District Court Judge Jamar Walker said the order, which applied to five wind projects along the East Coast, did not outline how construction on the Virginia project specifically poses a risk to national security.
He said an extended pause on the project would cause irreparable harm to Dominion, which says it’s losing $5 million per day during the stoppage.
Walker granted Dominion a preliminary injunction, which allows the company to resume construction while the case proceeds in court.
The $11 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, or CVOW, stretches about 27 to 44 miles off the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. It’s expected to start delivering electricity to the grid soon and finish construction later this year. Dominion already spent $9 billion on the project, which would become the nation's largest commercial offshore wind farm.
“Our team will now focus on safely restarting work to ensure CVOW begins delivery of critical energy in just weeks,” the utility said in a statement following the ruling. “While our legal challenge proceeds, we will continue seeking a durable resolution of this matter through cooperation with the federal government.”
Dominion’s court victory followed others in similar lawsuits farther north. Federal judges this week allowed two offshore wind projects off New York and New England to restart construction, also citing a lack of specificity on national security concerns.
The Virginia project, in particular, has gone through extensive review by federal and military agencies, given the project’s location near several military installations.
Dominion said officials have held numerous meetings and entered into several mitigation agreements to address potential security concerns, including meetings as recently as four days before the stop-work order. The utility paid the North American Aerospace Defense Command $250,000 for radar upgrades to mitigate potential issues.
CVOW is more than a decade in the making. Dominion acquired the lease in 2013 and went through a lengthy approval process with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management before starting construction in 2024.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting all new federal leases and permits for wind energy. It did not stop projects already fully permitted and under construction, such as Dominion’s.
Over the past year, the administration has taken further actions against offshore wind, but the Virginia project was unaffected until the order last month.
The Interior Department said the pause is meant to address “national security risks inherent to large-scale offshore wind projects.”
The government shared classified information with the court, but declined to provide the documents to Dominion, leaving the utility “flying blind” about the administration’s concerns, Dominion attorney James Auslander said at the hearing Friday.
Publicly, federal officials have identified “radar interference” as a potential risk from offshore wind, which Dominion said was discussed in its prior approval process and during ongoing conversations with federal agencies in Hampton Roads.
Other concerns remain classified.
“The government can't just wave around ‘national security’ as a magic wand,” Auslander said. “They can’t just say ‘national security,’ file a secret report and call it a day.”
Judge Walker said although the government has every right to address national security concerns, they would likely be tied to the operation of the wind farm, rather than construction. That doesn’t justify prohibiting such work while investigating further, he said.
The stop-work order is likely overly broad and “ill-fitted” because it does not explain harm from the Virginia project in particular, Walker said.
He also acknowledged Dominion’s concerns that the government has not engaged with the utility about how to address purported threats.
Stanley Woodward, associate attorney general for the Justice Department, said “not a lot of fruitful discussion can happen” with Dominion until the defense department decides what classified information it’s willing to share.
“Is it unfair? Yes,” he said. But “we take issue with any suggestion that we have politicized the process.”
Dominion received several amicus briefs in support leading up to Friday’s hearing, including from North America’s Building Trades Unions; Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Rep. Bobby Scott; and PJM Interconnection, the Mid-Atlantic’s regional electric grid operator.
PJM wrote that the region needs as much energy as it can get to handle drastic increases in electricity demand, fueled largely by data centers.
“It takes many years for new generation to be constructed and connected to the transmission system,” the organization wrote. “The CVOW project … is an integral component of needed new generation that PJM has been relying upon to timely achieve commercial operation.”
The Virginia offshore wind project, with 176 wind turbines, is expected to produce about 2.6 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power up to 660,000 homes.
