The Trump administration ordered an immediate halt to the buildout of a massive wind farm off the coast of Long Island on Wednesday, jeopardizing the city’s plans to convert a neglected stretch of Brooklyn waterfront into a manufacturing hub for the region’s nascent wind industry.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a memo called for the cessation of “all construction activities” on the Empire Wind 1 project, a wind farm planned for waters roughly 15 miles off of Long Beach by Norwegian energy giant Equinor. Burgum suggested that the Biden administration approved the offshore wind development in 2017 without adequate environmental analysis, but did not elaborate on what components of the project would require additional review.
David Schoetz, a spokesman for Equinor, confirmed that the company halted work on the project after it received notice from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Wednesday to pause Empire Wind 1, which began construction in 2024. “Empire is engaging with relevant authorities to clarify this matter and is considering its legal remedies, including appealing the order,” Schoetz said in a Thursday statement. In the meantime, construction at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal continues, he added.
The order jeopardizes the Adams administration’s plans to turn the 73-acre South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park — not to be confused with the 122-acre Brooklyn Marine Terminal to the north — into the base of operations for Empire Wind and a wind turbine manufacturing hub for the wind industry along the East Coast. A long-term suspension on Empire Wind 1 would be a blow to New York’s efforts to draw its energy from renewable sources — the project was designed to generate enough electricity to power 500,000 city homes.
Mayor Eric Adams, in a Thursday statement to Crain’s, said the decision poses a threat to the more than 1,500 locals hired to transform the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and to the health of the city’s power grid. He pledged to fight the decision in hopes of keeping the terminal project going.
“This project reinvests in Brooklyn’s working waterfront and advances a more dependable electricity grid to meet our city’s increased energy demands,” said Adams. “We will continue to work with all of our partners to make sure these critical projects — and the jobs they create — are protected.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul called the order a “federal overreach” that she won’t let stand.
“I will fight this every step of the way to protect union jobs, affordable energy and New York’s economic future,” Hochul said in a statement. “This fully federally permitted project has already put shovels in the ground before the President’s executive orders — it’s exactly the type of bipartisan energy solution we should be working on.”
Efforts to transform the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into the country’s largest offshore wind port began in earnest in 2024. Sustainable South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, L.P., the leaseholder of the city-owned South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park, awarded global construction firm Skanska a $861-million contract to redevelop the waterfront site.
The Sunset Park complex was set to assemble roughly 130 hulking wind turbines for Empire Wind 1, but before that can occur, roughly half a dozen Walmart-sized warehouse buildings must be razed and underground utility work must be laid to prepare the site for a production platform, said Sohil Patel, the project executive for South Brooklyn Marine Terminal at Skanska, in an interview last spring.
A slew of marine upgrades will also need to take place, including the buildout of a new wharf and dock facilities. Crews will also need to dredge the waters surrounding the port, which began last summer, to ensure large vessels can access the terminal, said Patel.
Construction on the terminal kicked off in May 2024 and is expected to wrap by the end of 2026. Once operational, the marine terminal will also serve as an interconnection site to plug in power from the 810 megawatt Empire Wind development to New York’s electric grid.
