Ørsted’s 924MW Sunrise Wind offshore wind project has been cleared to resume construction after a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C. granted an injunction preventing enforcement of a sweeping stop-work order issued by President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior.
Judge Royce Lamberth ruled from the bench that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to identify any concerns specific to Sunrise Wind in classified material presented to the court.
Sunrise Wind becomes the last of five offshore wind projects to secure injunctions blocking the shutdown order.
The project was around 45% complete at the time work was halted.
Lawyers for Sunrise Wind urged the court to focus on the imminent risk of losing access to Jan De Nul’s Connector cable-laying vessel, which has just arrived in Providence, Rhode Island and is scheduled to begin installing the project’s 80-mile export cable this week.
According to Sunrise Wind’s legal team, the vessel is contracted for a six-month campaign and has the right to leave the project afterward, with no availability again until the third quarter of 2027. Alternative vessels would not be able to mobilise until late 2026 and would still require an additional eight months of regulatory approvals.
The start of export cable installation represents a “critical inflection point” for the project, Sunrise Wind’s lawyers said, warning that further delays would trigger cascading schedule impacts and rising costs that could threaten the project’s financial viability.
Lawyers representing the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior argued that the court should defer to the government’s assessment of national security risks, which it has cited as justification for the construction halt.
