Statement attributable to Rob Freudenberg, Vice President of Energy and Environment Programs at RPA.
The U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum just ordered a halt to construction on Equinor’s Empire Wind 1 project off the coast of New York, citing dubious reasoning that the project suffered from inadequate environmental analysis conducted by the Biden Administration.
Until now, the project has progressed in an orderly fashion according to the laws, regulations, and permitting requirements of the State and Federal Government. This shortsighted decision to stop work on Empire Wind 1 – an offshore wind project off the coast of Long Island that had received federal approvals in 2024 – doesn’t just halt the completion of a project already under construction. It halts the production of reliable, domestic energy at a time of increasing energy demand and skyrocketing electricity rates. It halts the first day on the job for over 1,000 skilled workers employed at and around the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, an offshore wind port being constructed in Sunset Park, where Empire Wind 1 construction, operations, and maintenance had been set to take place and stimulate economic development across the supply chain.
The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) decision to reverse course and halt a shovels-in-the ground project breaks a critical energy node at the port, stalling the flow of clean energy into our grid, and perpetuating the pollution of our air from fossil-generated power plants, disproportionately affecting Black, brown, and low-wealth communities who have unfairly borne the burden of environmental injustice.
The DOI’s myopic decision also endangers Americans as it halts action to further reduce our contribution of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, threatening our ability to reach our climate goals and locking us into further environmental degradation and warmer planet with accelerating and worsening climate impacts, including extreme heat and periodic flooding from heavy rainfall, riverine overflows, and more frequent and intense coastal storms, made worse by sea level rise, which will ultimately permanently flood the lowest-lying coastal areas of our region and seriously threatens our housing supply.
Combined with the President’s attempts to halt congestion pricing in New York City, a pattern is emerging where this administration believes it can retroactively deny permits that have been lawfully vetted and approved. If these actions are allowed to stand, it raises the specter that no federal approval is ever final, but can be subject to arbitrary revocation, even years after it had been given and the works are underway. This would undermine the entire environmental review process, creating chaos in the permitting, planning and construction of vital infrastructure across the country.
We support Governor Hochul in her efforts to fight for this project and call on the Trump Administration to let this critical American energy independence project – and the workers building it – get back to work.
