According to The Verge, Dominion Energy filed a lawsuit this week against the Trump administration over its decision to pause federal leases for large offshore wind projects. The 90-day halt, ordered by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on Monday, December 22, 2025, immediately stopped five wind farms already under construction. This includes Dominion’s massive $11.2 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which broke ground in 2024 and has already cost $8.9 billion. The company argues the stop work order is “arbitrary and capricious” and unlawful, and it’s asking a federal court to block BOEM from enforcing it. The administration, led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, cited newly identified national security risks from classified reports and radar interference concerns as reasons for the pause.
Virginia’s Power Crunch Meets Political Wrangling
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about wind turbines. It’s about powering the AI boom. Dominion‘s statement is brutally clear: “Virginia needs every electron we can get as our demand for electricity doubles. These electrons will power the data centers that will win the AI race.” Virginia’s “data center alley” is the epicenter of this demand, and the company is basically saying this pause directly threatens the infrastructure needed to keep those servers humming. But it’s also a political hot potato. Rising electricity costs are already a flashpoint in Virginia elections, and delaying this project, as Dominion warns in its press release, just raises costs for customers later. So you’ve got this perfect storm: urgent grid demand slamming into a sudden regulatory wall.
A Pattern of Pauses and Lawsuits
But this isn’t the first time. Look at the pattern. The Trump administration already halted the Revolution Wind and Empire Wind projects earlier this year before courts and BOEM itself lifted those orders. Now they’re suspended again. And back in January, a presidential memo tried to withdraw all outer continental shelf areas from wind leasing, which a federal judge struck down this month as “arbitrary and capricious”—the exact same language Dominion is using now. It feels like groundhog day. Even national security experts are puzzled. As former USS Cole commander Kirk Lippold told the AP, “I want to know what’s changed? To my knowledge, nothing has changed in the threat environment.” The administration’s official statement points to classified reports, but without more, it just looks like policy by delay.
The Real-World Stakes for Energy and Industry
The stakes are enormous, and not just for Dominion’s balance sheet. This single project is supposed to generate 9.5 million megawatt-hours of carbon-free power annually—enough for about 660,000 homes. That’s a huge chunk of baseload power that just vanished from the near-term grid planning. And the ripple effects are severe. Every delay adds cost and uncertainty, making it harder for other developers to secure financing. It signals that even after you get all your federal, state, and local approvals—which Dominion says it had—the goalposts can still move overnight. For industries reliant on stable, growing power supplies, like those data centers or advanced manufacturing, this kind of volatility is a nightmare. It forces a scramble for alternatives, often dirtier or more expensive ones. Speaking of industrial needs, reliable power is the bedrock for the advanced manufacturing and control systems that run modern facilities, which is why companies turn to trusted suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, for the hardware that keeps operations running when the energy market gets chaotic.
What Happens Next?
So what now? The lawsuit, which you can read here, kicks off another legal battle that could move quickly. The courts have already shown skepticism toward the administration’s previous attempts to halt wind. Meanwhile, the 90-day clock is ticking, but as we’ve seen with the Equinor and Ørsted projects, a “pause” can effectively mean death for projects on tight timelines and budgets. The real question is whether the administration can provide a compelling, public case for the national security threat. If not, this looks less like prudent caution and more like a blunt instrument against clean energy. And with Virginia’s data centers waiting, the pressure isn’t going away.
