President Donald Trump wants the U.S. to build data centers as quickly as possible in order to win the artificial intelligence race against China. Yet the administration is undercutting its own goals with recent stop work orders for five offshore wind projects, one of which was set to serve Virginia — the largest cluster of data centers in the world.
Dominion Energy’s lawsuit challenging the orders, filed December 23, spells out this contradiction explicitly. Dominion, the utility developing the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial Project, said the project is key to meeting the region’s unprecedented growth in electricity demand, driven largely by the expansion of data centers and the digital economy.
“Stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, AI, and civilian assets,” Dominion said in a statement. “It will also lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs.”
Dominion publicly calling out the impacts of Trump’s policies is unusual at a time when individual utilities have mostly been silent about the administration’s attacks on renewable energy. Dominion in its complaint also accused the administration of acting out of “systematic and unfounded animus” against wind energy. (The Interior Department justified its stop work order in December by citing unspecified “national security risks” identified by the Department of War in a recent classified report.)
The order landed as many utilities along the East Coast face skyrocketing load growth from data centers. Dominion said it needs to add about 27 gigawatts of new generation to meet electricity demand that’s forecasted to spike 5.5 percent every year and double by 2039. The Virginia offshore wind project — just months away from completion — could supply 2.6 GW of renewable energy and avoid 5 million tons of carbon emissions each year.
Virginia, home to the so-called “Data Center Alley” outside of Washington, DC, already has nearly 6 GW of data center capacity. The state was still the top destination for new customers as of early last year, according to BloombergNEF. Between March 2024 and March 2025, Virginia had an 8.6 GW pipeline of new data center capacity, although most projects were in the early stage. Northern Virginia is becoming saturated, pushing new development in other parts of the state, NEF analysts said.
Dominion in its complaint also illustrated how Trump is undercutting his own goal to lower utility bills. The CVOW would save customers $3 billion in fuel costs over its first decade, the company said.
Furthermore, analysts have warned that the administration’s attack on wind energy will have ripple effects beyond that sector, forcing investors to reassess risk — and therefore the costs — of everything from solar farms and advanced nuclear technologies to gas plants.
Matt Middleton, a spokesperson for DOI said the administration is putting America first “by safeguarding reliable, affordable energy and defending the safety of the American people. We will not sacrifice national security or economic stability for projects that make no sense for America’s future.”
A federal judge has scheduled a hearing on Dominion’s case on Jan. 9. It’s among the latest cases in a string of legal disputes between the Trump administration and the offshore wind industry. Ørsted and Equinor, which are developing several projects off the East Coast, filed their own lawsuits against the Interior Department.
