Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has criticised the Trump administration’s actions against the offshore wind sector, describing the move to halt projects under construction as “insane”.
Gore made the remarks during a public conversation with Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, according to comments first reported by Bloomberg.
“We have to solve the climate crisis,” Gore said. “We really don’t have any choice about this.”
In December, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), under the Trump administration, sent near-identical letters to five offshore wind projects under construction, ordering developers to stop work while the government reviewed potential national security concerns.
The affected projects included Ørsted’s 704-megawatt Revolution Wind and 924MW Sunrise Wind, Dominion Energy’s 2.4-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, Equinor’s 810MW Empire Wind 1, and the 806MW Vineyard Wind 1 project developed by Iberdrola and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
Construction was halted across all five projects following the orders. Since then, developers behind Revolution Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind and Empire Wind 1 have secured injunctions from federal courts, temporarily blocking enforcement of the shutdown directives while legal challenges proceed.
The legal decisions have allowed work to resume on those projects, while uncertainty remains for the broader U.S. offshore wind sector amid ongoing political and regulatory scrutiny.
