#equinor

Excerpt:

Developers of five offshore wind farms that were ordered last week by the Trump administration to halt construction are suing to restart work on at least three of the projects.

The Interior Department on Dec. 22 ordered companies to halt work on five wind farms in various stages of construction along the East Coast. They were: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off the coast of New York; Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts; and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia.

The administration cited unspecified national security concerns about the projects.

On Thursday, Orsted, the Danish energy giant that is building Revolution Wind, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On Friday Equinor, the developer of Empire Wind, did the same.

Both companies said they are seeking preliminary injunctions that would allow construction to continue as the litigation proceeds. Orsted is also building Sunrise Wind and said it was considering a similar legal challenge to restart work on that project, too.

The action this week comes after Dominion Energy, the developer of Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, filed the first legal challenge, on Dec. 23. In its complaint in federal court in Virginia, Dominion said the administration’s actions were causing “immediate, irreparable harm” and $5 million in losses per day. The Virginia project is the largest of the five. A judge has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 9.

Avangrid, the developer of the fifth wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1 off the Massachusetts coast, has not indicated whether it plans to fight the administration. Vineyard Wind is already partly running, with about half of the project’s planned 62 turbines sending power to the electric grid.

The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.

At stake overall is about $25 billion of investment in the five wind farms. The projects were expected to create 10,000 jobs and to power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.

The Godfather of Wind's New Floating Revolution

Bloomberg Quicktake

Norwegian energy giant Equinor, formerly the state-owned company Statoil, has made a proposal to the Greek government to create a floating wind farm. The project would be located in the center of the Aegean Sea and would be capable of serving up to 40,000 households.

According to the Athens News Agency, the investment plan has been discussed between the Norwegian ambassador to Greece and the Greek government.

The Norwegian company believes that a wind turbine platform will be an ideal investment for the region due to the relatively low waves there. However, there are strong winds prevailing over the sea in the area between Tinos, Syros and Mykonos Islands.

The Norwegian Embassy in Athens, which has taken initiatives in this direction, is co-organizing a seminar in April with ELETAEN, the Greek Wind Energy Association.

The forum will discuss floating wind turbines, which are offshore systems mounted on floating structures to generate electricity in water depths where fixed-foundation turbines are not feasible.

Excerpt from this story from Nation of Change:

“Do governments have to do more? Absolutely,…without question. There is a gap between ambition and policies that’s large. It needs to close.” – Mark Carney, United Nations Climate Action & Financial Special Envoy. 

Now-Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke those words in 2021, commenting on news that the six largest Canadian banks had joined the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA)—an effort Carney spearheaded to steer capital away from fossil fuel development.

What a difference five years makes. All those financial institutions have since fled the now-defunct NZBA, which collapsed in 2025. Carney just pledged to pay $1 billion in required fees to the United Nations for the massive Bay du Nord offshore oil development in Newfoundland on behalf of oil giant Equinor, a move that might be described as a haiku of hypocrisy.

The Bay du Nord proposal would involve deep water drilling 500 km offshore of St. John’s, potentially extracting almost one billion barrels of oil with emissions per barrel just six percent lower than diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands.

When Newfoundland and Equinor signed a tentative agreement on royalties in early May, the federal government proudly proclaimed in a statement, “The Government of Canada is committed to helping de-risk this project to enable this important investment in Canada’s energy future to move forward.”

Strange. Canada pledged in 2009 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies along with our G20 partners. As part of the legally-binding 2015 Paris Agreement, Canada also committed to “making finance flows consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”. Yet Ottawa still shovels billions in public funds at a highly profitable and polluting sector, totaling almost $30 billion in 2024. 

“There is no good reason why the federal government should be using taxpayer dollars to give a giant subsidy to a foreign-owned oil company,” Julia Levin, Associate Director, National Climate at the non-profit Environmental Defense, told  DeSmog.

Environmental Defense previously conducted opinion polling which showed that two-thirds of the public oppose fossil fuel subsides. “That’s not how Canadians want their money used,” said Levin. “It violates the government’s own commitments that they have now had for decades about ending fossil fuel subsidies.”

Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned energy company behind Empire Wind, is reportedly considering suing the Trump administration after the Department of the Interior canceled its Long Island offshore wind farm last month. As my colleagues Emily Pontecorvo and Jael Holzman reported at the time, Empire Wind was “the second fully permitted offshore wind project” to be targeted by the administration, and its potential cancellation represents “a huge blow to New York State’s climate and clean energy goals.”