Dominion Energy has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Department of the Interior.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on December 23, 2025, challenges a sudden stop-work order that halted the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. Dominion, which has already invested approximately $8.9 billion of its projected $11.2 billion budget, argues the order is arbitrary and capricious and lacks a rational basis.
National security vs. energy reliability:
The administration cited newly classified Pentagon reports claiming that the massive turbine blades and reflective towers cause radar clutter, potentially obscuring defense targets. However, Dominion contends that the project has already cleared years of multi-agency reviews—including by the Department of Defense—which previously found no unmanageable security risks. The utility warns that every day of delay costs more than $5 million in vessel-related expenses and idled crews, costs that could ultimately be passed on to Virginia consumers.
The AI and data center bottleneck:
A central pillar of Dominion’s argument is that halting the 2.6 GW project—which is already 70% complete—directly undermines American technological leadership. The utility notes that Virginia is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers. Without this power, the state’s ability to support the AI revolution and critical military installations is at risk. By freezing this capacity, Dominion argues the government is creating an energy security disaster rather than solving a national security one.
Official statements from the record:
The legal filing and accompanying statements from Dominion leadership highlight the severity of the infrastructure standstill:
Dominion Energy Official Statement: “Stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important warfighting, AI, and civilian assets. It will also lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs.”
Excerpt from Federal Court Filing: “Numerous statements and actions by the current Administration indicate that the Order instead is motivated by systematic and unfounded animus against wind energy… The lack of any reasoned basis for the order renders it arbitrary and capricious.”
The road ahead:
While the government maintains the 90-day pause is necessary for mitigation assessments, the industry is watching closely. The outcome of a January 16, 2026, hearing will determine if a temporary restraining order will allow construction to resume.
If the halt stands, it could set a precedent that any large-scale infrastructure project—even those nearly finished—is subject to sudden policy reversals, injecting massive uncertainty into the trillions of dollars in capital currently waiting for a wire.
