In Reversal, Trump Allows Work on Long Island Wind Project to Resume

The Trump administration's policies — on tariffs, the Russia-Ukraine war, immigration, clean energy, and more — seem to change based on which way the wind is blowing.

The latest proof came on Monday, when the Trump administration reversed its decision to halt a massive offshore wind project near Long Island, Gothamist reports. Construction was halted in in the wake of a Trump executive order, but now work will resume on the Empire Wind 1 project, which will provide 1,500 union jobs and generate clean electricity for half a million homes.

The reversal is a huge boost for building owners, including co-op and condo boards, who are working to ditch fossil fuels in favor of clean electricity as they try to reduce their buildings' carbon emissions enough to satisfy strict state and city climate laws.

“I knew this critical project needed to move forward and have spent weeks pushing the federal government to rescind the stop-work order to allow the workers to return and ensure this important source of renewable power could come to fruition,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement late Monday.

The commercial wind farm is being built by Norwegian company Equinor about 12 nautical miles south of Long Island. Construction began on the first phase in 2024 and is now more than 30% complete, according to Equinor. The project is scheduled for completion in 2027.

In mid-April, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the administration was directing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to immediately pause Empire Wind 1 so federal officials could review “information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”

The resumption of work on Empire Wind 1 seems to indicate that the information on the Biden administration's rush to approve the project proved groundless. Fake news, as some would say.

The work stoppage was met with outrage by numerous New York Democrats, including Hochul, who at the time promised to “fight this every step of the way.” State Sen. Andrew Gounardes of Brooklyn called the move a “slap in the face to New Yorkers.” It's also part of a broader drive by the Trump administration to gut clean-energy projects — Trump has called climate change a "hoax" — in favor of increased drilling for oil and natural gas. A small but telling expression of this drive came last week, when the Trump administration announced that it was moving to kill the popular Energy Star system that rates the efficiency of appliances and building systems. Energy Star has won the support of every president since its inception in 1992. Until now.

In April, more than 1,000 companies, municipalities and organizations sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, urging him to “maintain full funding and staffing levels” for the program. The letter noted that Energy Star costs about $32 million a year to administer, “yet saves American households more than $40 billion annually on energy bills.” That, the letter adds, is a “tremendous return on taxpayer investment." And it's not fake news.