Interior Department Plans to Revoke Permit for $11 Billion Maryland Offshore Wind Farm

The action would resolve a lawsuit brought by Ocean City, which says the project poses risks to tourism, fishing, water quality and marine mammals.

The White House in Washington on Aug. 14, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The Trump administration is preparing to revoke a Biden-era permit for an $11.5 billion offshore wind farm planned off the coast of Maryland.

In a court filing on Aug. 25, the U.S. Department of the Interior said its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is “in the process of reconsidering its prior approval” of the project’s construction and operations plan, which was issued in the final days of the Biden administration.

The department indicated it intends “no later than September 12 to remand and, separately, to vacate” the approval document.

The move came in coordination with Ocean City, a resort town on Maryland’s southeastern shore that sued the Interior Department last year to block the project, which would be built a little more than 10 miles offshore. Both parties request that the court put the case on hold while the Interior Department works to resolve the dispute by rescinding the permit.

The project developer, US Wind, maintains that its permit is legally sound.

“Our construction and operations plan approval is the subject of ongoing litigation, but we remain confident that the federal permits we secured after a multi-year and rigorous public review process are legally sound,” the Baltimore-headquartered company said in a statement to multiple media outlets.

US Wind, which is 80 percent owned by the Italian renewable energy firm Renexia and backed by U.S. asset manager Apollo Global Management, won federal approval in December 2024 to build the Maryland wind farm. The project is central to the Biden administration’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

Planned to be built in phases, it could include up to 114 wind turbines, four offshore substations, one meteorological tower, and four export cable corridors, with an expected capacity of more than 2 gigawatts. BOEM had estimated it would generate enough electricity to power more than 718,000 homes and support about 2,700 jobs each year over seven years of development.

From the onset, the project faced fierce opposition from tourism-dependent Ocean City. In a lawsuit filed in October 2024, a coalition of local leaders, residents, and business and environmental groups argued that the presence of massive turbines would destroy ocean views, disrupt commercial and recreational fishing, degrade water quality, and endanger marine life.

“This project threatens to devastate our tourism industry, commercial and recreational fishing sectors, and poses risks to national defense,” Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan said in May after a court turned down US Wind’s request to dismiss the case.

“It could lead to the deaths of hundreds of marine mammals, including the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale—all so that an Italian company can receive subsidies from the State of Maryland to produce unreliable and expensive electricity.”

Maryland supports offshore wind development by providing renewable energy credits (ORECs) to companies building projects off its coast. A 2024 law expanded those incentives, allowing developers like Renexia to claim additional ORECs in response to market changes and to add new capacity to existing projects.

“We are grateful for the Maryland government’s unwavering support and strong leadership on this critical piece of legislation,” said Riccardo Toto, president of US Wind and general manager of Renexia, last year. “US Wind is here to stay. I am confident that we will build Maryland’s first offshore wind farm on schedule.”

Ocean City has also filed a separate suit challenging an air pollution permit issued to US Wind by Maryland regulators in June.

The Ocean City windfarm is not the first Biden-era offshore wind project the Trump administration has sought to cancel. On Aug. 22, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a “stop work” order to Danish energy company Orsted for its Revolution Wind project in Rhode Island, citing concerns related to “national security interests” as well as “interference with reasonable uses” of waters.

President Donald Trump is an outspoken critic of wind energy, which he said is costly and harms wildlife. During his reelection campaign, he pledged to roll back the Biden administration’s regulatory approvals for wind projects once he returned to office.

“They’re horrible and the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said at a campaign event in New Jersey last year, referring to the state’s offshore turbines. “They ruin the environment. They kill the birds. They kill the whales.”