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Thousands of jobs are in jeopardy after the White House halted construction on a nearly complete wind farm in Rhode Island, the latest volley by the Trump administration against wind power.
Danish clean energy company Ørsted, one of the project’s developers, received an order late Friday from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to immediately halt work on a wind project off the coast of Rhode Island that was 80% complete. Acting BOEM Director Matthew Giacona cited “concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States,” but did not mention specifics.
Those involved in the project say pulling the plug threatens not only higher energy costs for residents, but thousands of jobs.
The wind project supports “more than 2,500 US jobs across construction, operations, shipbuilding, and manufacturing,” Tory Mazzola, head of communications and public affairs for Ørsted Americas, told CNN in a statement Monday. “Hundreds more union workers are slated to work offshore before the end of this year. All these jobs hang in the balance from this stop-work order.”
When asked about job loss, BOEM said it had no additional comment. The White House referred CNN back to the Interior Department, which oversees BOEM.
President Donald Trump, who has raged against wind turbines for many years, has released a series of executive orders and statements during his second term undermining wind power.
“We started to use wind,” Trump said Monday when discussing US energy. “Wind doesn’t work.”
Called Revolution Wind, the stalled project is located in federal waters 15 miles south of Rhode Island and began construction under the Biden administration in 2023. Ørsted estimates a completed project would provide enough energy to power upwards of 350,000 homes across Rhode Island and Connecticut. It was scheduled to be finished next year.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, blasted the decision in a Monday press conference, claiming halting the project would hurt the state’s economy and hamper regional grid reliability.
Connecticut and Rhode Island residents rank third and fifth, respectively, in prices paid for residential electricity, according to latest data from the US Energy Information Administration.
Local labor leaders say the Trump administration is also cutting off high-paying union jobs.
Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, called the order “a betrayal of Rhode Island’s working-class.”
“A lot of our members… voted for this administration, and this isn’t what they voted for,” said Michael Sabitoni, president of the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents many of the unions working on Revolution Wind. “They didn’t vote for them to put them on the unemployment line.”
Sabitoni said Friday’s order didn’t come as a surprise. The unions have been concerned about the “signals” the administration has been sending, but he called cancelling a nearly-completed project an act of “recklessness.”
“To stop a project that’s 80% complete, lay off hundreds and hundreds of tradesmen and women and other people that are supplying that industry for no apparent reason… makes no sense,” he said. “It’s one of the most asinine moves I’ve ever seen in my career. And I’ve been doing this for 38 years.”
In April, a similar stop-work order was issued for another offshore wind project in waters surrounding New York. That order was eventually lifted in May, allowing the construction to continue, but at a cost of $955 million to the company behind the project.
Lamont suggested Connecticut leaders could make a deal with the Trump administration to get the project back up and running, since it’s so close to being finished.
“We’re on the eighth inning of this baseball game,” Lamont said.
-CNN’s Ella Nilsen contributed to this report
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