A US District Court judge ruled on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump's Interior Department may reconsider the Biden administration’s approval of the SouthCoast Wind project planned off the coast of Massachusetts.
The order sends the matter back to Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to revisit its decision as part of Trump’s broad review of US offshore wind leasing and permitting.
Interior has said it identified issues with the project’s environmental analysis and that a review could result in a withdrawal of the SouthCoast permit.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling in a lawsuit brought by the island town of Nantucket, Massachusetts, earlier this year, challenging the agency’s approval of the project.
SouthCoast Wind’s developer, Ocean Winds, is a joint venture between Portugal’s EDP Renewables and France’s ENGIE.
In the order, Chutkan wrote that the court was not convinced that the developer was likely to suffer immediate and significant hardship as a result of the reconsideration.
Ocean Winds was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Chris Reese and Bill Berkrot)