In August 2025, development of the Revolution Wind project off the Rhode Island coast came to a halt with a stop work order issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). If this project were to be completed, the wind farm would have provided over 700 MW of sustainable wind energy for Rhode Island and Connecticut. At the time production halted, the project was 80% complete, with 45 out of 65 turbines already installed (1).
The initial reaction from state lawmakers and the companies behind the project — Danish firm Ørsted and German wind developer Skyborn Renewables — was confusion, with state officials calling the act “bizarre.” The stop work order offered little clarification, as it cited no legal justifications for the action, only that the BOEM was seeking to address national security concerns (1). This led the affected states and companies to file separate lawsuits, and on Sept. 22, a federal judge lifted the halt on the project, allowing construction to resume. Although this project is slated to be fully operational in 2026, the future of the American wind energy industry as a whole remains uncertain.
In the U.S. today, wind energy comprises 10% of our total energy portfolio. In 2024, combined wind and solar energy output surpassed that of coal for the first time (2). In many parts of the country, wind energy is far more readily visible than hydroelectric, solar, or geothermal energy, and as a result, the iconic white, tri-rotor wind turbine has become a ubiquitous symbol of the energy transition. If a wind turbine is printed on a product’s label, it is conveying that the product was made sustainably. When we at CEP include an image of a wind turbine in an article, it indicates that the article is about sustainability, even if it doesn’t mention wind specifically. Still, the constant nature of this symbol might itself present a problem.
Humans have been using windmills to harness energy for over a thousand years, but the recognizable tri-rotor turbine design didn’t really come about until the 1970s oil embargo prompted...
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