Trump Halts Empire and Sunrise Wind Projects, Citing Security Risks and Snagging Hochul's Plans

The sudden pause on New York’s flagship offshore wind projects exposes a fraught intersection between climate ambition, national security, and the politics of energy transition.

On a blustery June morning, cranes stood idle at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, their stillness belying the $15bn surge New York has wagered on its burgeoning offshore wind industry. The quiet is not due to lack of demand or investor enthusiasm but the abrupt intervention of Washington. This week, the Department of the Interior (DOI), at the behest of the Trump administration, “paused” construction on the Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, invoking vague national security concerns and dealing a blow to Governor Kathy Hochul’s ambitions for New York’s clean energy future.

The DOI’s halt covers not only the two major New York projects but three others along the Eastern Seaboard. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum cited “emerging national security risks”—notably, technological vulnerabilities to adversarial actors and radar interference. While government reports do indicate that turbines can muddle coastal radar, few details accompanied the order, which leaves ongoing construction works in legal limbo and casts a pall over New York’s decarbonisation timetable.

On these windswept ports once destined to become America’s clean energy proving ground, the implications are immediate. Empire Wind, a venture by Norwegian energy giant Equinor, and Sunrise Wind, led by Denmark’s Ørsted, together promised enough electricity to power a million New York homes. The state had trumpeted these projects as linchpins in keeping the city’s lights on as fossil fuel plants shutter, and as critical ballast against the looming threat of grid instability.

With their suspension, the economic fallout is already briskly debated. Governor Hochul estimates that thousands of union jobs—many of them in districts long neglected by the city’s technology revolutions—are imperilled, and billions in capital may evaporate. New York, which does not have the latitude or land to host vast solar or wind farmlands, was counting on offshore wind to satisfy rising appetites for electrons without further straining its fragile grid.

The reliability risks are not theoretical. Absent Empire Wind, and if the parallel Champlain Hudson transmission line from Canada stalls, the New York Independent System Operator cautions of possible blackouts or brownouts as soon as the summer of 2025, particularly on the hottest afternoons when demand spikes. The risk is not restricted to inconvenience: system disruptions could upend everything from subway operations to data centres. In its recent planning, City Hall had placed significant bets on these offshore projects to help reach its 70% renewable electricity target by 2030.

The pause, then, portends more than a technical hiccup; it signals a renewed clash between federal prerogatives and state-level climate aspirations. The spectre of “national security” has often been stretched to fit many a political need in Washington, and this occasion seems no different. Past assessments have indeed flagged some risk that tall turbines might degrade radar signals from coastal defense installations. Yet, Europe, whose North Sea waters bristle with rotors, has mitigated such issues with modest investment—suggesting the DOI’s rationale is at least convenient, if not entirely cynical.

Longer-term, the uncertainty bodes ill for investor confidence. Major global developers like Equinor and Ørsted, already bruised by inflation and supply-chain snarls, now face the added spectre of shifting American political tides. Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch policymakers—whose own offshore wind industries have flourished through stable frameworks—are likely watching this episode with a mix of bafflement and concern. Recent cancellations of large American wind contracts due to rising costs had given pause, but no offshore market can thrive if a sudden administrative “pause” can jeopardise a $15bn industry with scarcely a month’s notice.

Crosscurrents in the global wind sector

The stopped projects also expose America’s uneasy balancing act on climate and energy. Globally, wind power capacity grew by a robust 70 gigawatts last year, led by China and Northern Europe, where governments see renewable energy less as a wedge in the culture war and more as economic insurance. In Britain, wind now covers nearly 30% of national power consumption, and local security worries are addressed by engineering workarounds rather than wholesale bans. New York’s setback therefore portends a self-inflicted wound in both the domestic renewables race and the international effort to chip away at reliance on fossil fuels.

That the intervening hand came down on New York—a state that contributes 8% of US GDP and is routinely cast as a bogeyman in populist federal politics—will further seem to many New Yorkers like a calculated snub. One recalls that in the American system, national security has often been invoked to override regional priorities. But what is called “security” in Washington can seem an arbitrary and protectionist lever elsewhere, particularly when it torpedoes projects that would enhance the city’s energy independence and climate resilience.

Critics of the DOI pause argue that reducing American reliance on imported oil should itself count as a security objective. By holding the state’s clean power hostage to ambiguous federal priorities, Washington risks more than a local recession in Brooklyn; it signals to global markets that the US is an unpredictable partner in clean-tech investment. Nor is the optics problem trifling: the world’s financial capital limping toward rolling blackouts for want of wind will not bolster America’s standing at global climate summits.

Some bolder advocates suggest New York should consider legal action or retooling contracts to provision power from onshore renewables. Yet geography, cost, and permitting hurdles render such back-up plans either puny or glacially slow. For now, local officials have little option but to wait—and hope that next year’s political winds veer in a more propitious direction.

In the forum of great cities, New York is seldom accused of tepid ambition. But national obstacles to local progress are reminders that even the boldest municipal plans must weather the crosscurrents of American politics. Investment, grid reliability, and the livelihoods of New Yorkers in the state’s emerging wind economy all hang in the balance, their fate pinned not to turbine blades but to arcane interpretations of security in the capital. For a metropolis accustomed to coping with uncertainty, the vagaries of federal energy policy feel oddly capricious.

In the coming months, New York’s bet on the future of energy will be tested. National security is not a trivial concern, but nor should it become a catch-all barrier to urgent innovation. If Washington insists on steering the ship, we might wish—if only quietly—that it not cut the city’s power at the height of demand. ■