…JK! US President Donald Trump will never cry surrender in the war against offshore wind turbines. The President was burned once before, when a wind farm arose in Aberdeen Bay in Scotland, within view of a Trump-branded golf course back in the early 2000’s. Never again! The President has taken extreme measures to prevent such blight from tainting the shores of the United States. Nevertheless, scores of the pesky oversized pinwheels have already eluded the Trump chopper, and many more are on the way.

The latest news concerns CVOW, the 2.6-gigwatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project under the wing of the leading utility Dominion. As the name of the project indicates, CVOW sits in the Atlantic Ocean about 24 nautical miles (28 land miles) off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

CVOW began taking shape during Trump’s first turn around the Oval Office, and construction was well under way when his second term began on January 20, 2025.

Immediately upon taking office, Trump abruptly suspended the offshore wind lease program administered by the Department of the Interior. He also ordered spurious re-reviews of offshore projects that were already in the permitting pipeline, and he had the Department of Justice administer a legally questionable buy-back program to prevent activity from stirring among other lease holders. In addition, he had the Interior Department issue multiple emergency orders aimed at stopping five offshore projects off the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts, where construction work was already well under way.

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