US Justice Department asks courts to revoke permits for three offshore wind farms

Serguey Asael Shinder26 October 2026, 09:041 min read

The US Department of Justice filed motions in October asking federal judges to revoke the Department of the Interior's approvals of the construction and operation plans for three offshore wind projects: the 2.2 GW Maryland Offshore Wind, the 2.6 GW New England Wind, and the 700 MW Revolution Wind. Asking a court to undo a permit the government itself issued is an unusual step, and it lands in the middle of a legislative negotiation. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a sponsor of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, responded bluntly: "This is how you blow up a permitting deal."

What it means

The legal manoeuvre matters less than the signal it sends to capital. Offshore wind is financed on the assumption that a federal approval, once granted, is durable; a government moving to revoke its own permits mid-project attacks that assumption directly, and the cost is not limited to the three farms named. Every developer and lender now has to price the possibility that an approval can be withdrawn by the same administration that issued it, which raises the cost of capital across the entire pipeline. The permitting-bill angle is the sharpest irony: the Senate deal exists to make approvals faster and more reliable, and a court fight to unwind existing approvals cuts against the very predictability such a bill is meant to buy. Whether the motions succeed may matter less than the uncertainty they introduce.