Hampton Roads has bet big on the offshore wind industry.
Dominion Energy is building the nation’s largest offshore wind farm 27 miles off the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, and has two more leases waiting in the wings.
Local economic development officials have also worked hard to attract related businesses to make southeastern Virginia an offshore wind hub, including a South Korean manufacturer of undersea electrical cables.
President Donald Trump’s administration now threatens to put up a roadblock to further growing Virginia’s industry.
“We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Trump said recently.
On his first day in office this week, Trump signed an executive order that temporarily halts all new federal leases and permits for wind energy.
It does not stop projects already under construction, like Dominion’s $10 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. But it does open the door to do so.
The president directed federal officials to “review the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”
Dominion started building its 176-turbine wind farm last spring, and plans to resume in May. The company can only install foundations May through October, when endangered whales are least likely to pass through.
Spokesperson Jeremy Slayton said in an email this week the utility is confident CVOW will be completed on time.
“Virginia's clean energy transition and our ‘all of the above’ strategy, including Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, have been underway for several years under multiple state and federal administrations and with bipartisan support from policymakers at every level,” Slayton wrote. “Bipartisan leaders agree it has been an economic boom for Virginia.”
He pointed to a recent comment by Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior Department, which oversees offshore wind leases through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
“If they make sense and they are already in law then they will continue,” Burgum said during his confirmation hearing.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has touted an “all of the above” approach to energy in Virginia, including supporting the offshore wind industry. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment this week.
Last year, Dominion gained two additional offshore wind leases. A 176,000-acre site directly adjacent to the CVOW project cost just over $17.6 million during a federal auction.
The company also agreed to pay Avangrid Renewables $160 million to take over Kitty Hawk North Wind, a 40,000-acre lease off the Outer Banks.
Neither of those projects has received federal permitting. Slayton said the company does not currently have an estimated cost or timeline for developing the sites.
They “provide us with potential options for additional offshore wind development,” he said. “If we pursued these projects, they are planned for the 2030s.”
There’s another way Dominion could be affected by a lack of support from the federal government: in court.
The utility is currently fighting a lawsuit from a coalition of conservative interest groups, including the Heartland Institute. The groups argue Dominion — and the federal agencies that approved the Virginia wind farm — were negligent in assessing the project’s potential impacts to endangered whales.
A federal judge last year denied the plaintiffs’ initial request to halt construction of Dominion’s project. The suit is still pending in the federal court system.
Industry leaders told the New York Times this week they worry Trump’s order makes it unlikely the new administration would continue to defend wind developers fighting lawsuits along the East Coast, including Dominion.
Slayton declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
In the meantime, local officials are waiting for more clarity on how the order will play out.
Doug Smith, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Alliance, an economic development organization that’s worked to boost the local offshore wind industry, said in a statement that “Hampton Roads is well positioned to support the industry and has had very real success to date.
“We will be watching the implementation of the (executive order) closely to understand the ramifications for our region, but it is too early to say at this point.”
