NORFOLK, Va. — Dominion Energy won a preliminary injunction Friday allowing construction to resume on its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off Virginia Beach after the Trump administration issued a stop-work directive for several East Coast offshore wind builds. U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker said the Interior Department’s suspension — based on classified national security concerns about radar interference — was too broad for the Virginia project and centered on turbine operations rather than ongoing construction, Jan. 16, 2026.
Dominion Energy’s Virginia project gets back to work
The preliminary injunction allows Dominion Energy to restart offshore installation and related staging while its lawsuit challenging the federal suspension continues. In a statement, the utility said crews will “focus on safely restarting work” and keep seeking a “durable resolution” with the federal government, according to its announcement of the injunction.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is designed to install 176 turbines with total capacity of 2.6 gigawatts — enough electricity to power up to about 660,000 homes. Dominion Energy has already spent nearly $9 billion on the roughly $11.2 billion project, as described in a Reuters account of Walker’s decision. Dominion has said it expects the project to begin delivering power in the coming weeks, though offshore work remains sensitive to weather and vessel availability.
Ørsted and Equinor notch similar court wins
Walker’s order is the third in a week to clear a halted offshore wind project to resume construction after Interior issued stop-work orders in late December. Earlier, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington granted a preliminary injunction letting Ørsted’s Revolution Wind project restart, according to a Reuters report on the Ørsted case.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, also in Washington, issued an injunction for Equinor’s Empire Wind project off New York, finding the government’s concerns did not outweigh the “irreparable harm” the developer said the shutdown could cause, as detailed in Reuters coverage of the Equinor ruling.
Developers and supporting states argue the pause threatens projects that depend on scarce installation vessels and narrow seasonal weather windows, while the administration says it needs time to review newly raised Defense Department concerns. The Associated Press reported that two other projects — Sunrise Wind and Vineyard Wind — remain under stop-work orders as their lawsuits proceed.
Why Dominion Energy’s case matters for Virginia
Virginia leaders have leaned on offshore wind to help meet climate targets and add capacity as electricity demand grows, including from large data centers. State regulators approved Dominion’s offshore wind plans and customer cost recovery in 2022, Utility Dive reported.
Dominion also moved to diversify financing as the sector faced inflation and supply-chain pressures, agreeing in 2024 to sell a 50% noncontrolling stake in the project to investment firm Stonepeak, according to a 2024 Reuters report.
For Dominion Energy, the injunction is a narrow but immediate win: Construction can continue while the courts weigh how far the federal government can go in halting permitted offshore wind projects midstream.
