The Story Behind Trump’s Order Halting Virginia Offshore Wind

The media has been awash with indignant stories about the Department of Interior’s recent order halting further construction for the Virginia Wind project. The grousing by opponents runs the gamut from “arbitrary and capricious” to “illegal and unconstitutional” to “spiteful and retaliatory.”

But what is missing from all this noise is an understanding of the long history of the Pentagon’s objections to any and all industrial development of the ocean waters lying off Norfolk, VA — the home of the largest military complex in the world. These objections have included resistance to both oil and gas exploration as well as offshore wind.

The Pentagon’s objections to any kind of commercial development in the waters off the Norfolk Navy Base began several decades ago. Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was particularly eager to promote oil and gas exploration off Virginia’s coast. This prompted the Navy to issue two classified reports in 2010 and 2015 that vigorously objected to oil and gas exploration adjacent to the Norfolk naval base. Further efforts to advance oil and gas exploration died a relatively quick death in the face of this military opposition.

After the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) was amended in 2005 to authorize offshore wind development, the Pentagon once again issued a report in 2017 objecting to any wind energy construction in 94% of the ocean waters off Norfolk. This report was reinforced by another report in 2022, which further dismissed offshore wind as incompatible with military operations. Both of these Navy reports were classified, and the precise national security liabilities have remained sealed. But the ultimate conclusion was not — offshore wind development of any size in federal waters off Norfolk posed unacceptable risks to national security.

But then, the Obama and Biden administrations arrived with their zeal for renewable energy. They started pressuring the Navy to retract its objections to offshore wind. The result was the emergence of the Commercial Virginia Offshore Wind project, which Dominion Energy eagerly embraced both as a means of pacifying the green energy lobby and also of deriving extravagant profits from a bloated, expensive asset base.