Politics & Government
US Wind Says Baltimore Steel Facility Will Move Ahead, Despite Feds Pulling Back $47.4 Million
The company added that steel manufactured on the site would also fuel the shipbuilding industry.
September 3, 2025
The developer of a planned Maryland offshore wind farm insisted Tuesday that a related steel manufacturing facility in Sparrows Point will move forward, despite the federal government withdrawing a $47.4 million grant for the project last week.
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The Sparrows Point Steel Marshalling Project was one of a dozen projects targeted by the U.S. Department of Transportation Friday when it withdrew $679 million in previously approved grants for port and rail infrastructure improvements in support of wind power projects across the country.
In announcing the cuts, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said they were part of a Trump administration effort to slash funding for “doomed” offshore wind farms.
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The administration of President Joe Biden “bent over backwards to use transportation dollars for their Green New Scam agenda while ignoring the dire needs of our shipbuilding industry,” Duffy said in a statement Friday. “Thanks to President Trump, we are prioritizing real infrastructure improvements over fantasy wind projects that cost much and offer little.”
But US Wind, the Baltimore-based wind farm developer behind the Sparrows Point project, was defiant Tuesday. It said the $400 million project planned for nearly 100 acres on the site of the former Bethlehem Steel mill “will continue to move forward, ultimately bringing hundreds of manufacturing jobs to the Baltimore region.”
The company added that steel manufactured on the site would also fuel the shipbuilding industry.
“There continues to be a robust market for steel components for the energy and shipbuilding industries, and US Wind is confident that just as steel has been a key part of the region’s past, Sparrows Point Steel will be an important part of Maryland’s industrial future,” wrote Nancy Sopko, US Wind’s vice president for external affairs, in a statement.
Trump administration plans to revoke federal approval for Ocean City wind farm
The facility is expected to fabricate steel components for wind turbines, including towers and monopiles. In 2023, US Wind inked a “long-term partnership” deal with Haizea Wind Group, a company that focuses on turbine design, manufacturing and assembly, with facilities in Spain’s Basque Country and in France.
Later that year, US Wind announced it had won the grant funding from the federal government for the Sparrows Point project. It said the influx of cash would “help transform the site into a sustainable working waterfront by supporting extensive upgrades needed for large offshore wind components to be staged and transported to offshore wind project sites along the East Coast.”
Duffy said the funding revocation came after a “review of all discretionary grant programs with obligated and unobligated projects” turned up the wind projects “not aligned with the goals and priorities of the administration.”
President Donald Trump has made his intentions clear from the start, beginning with a January executive order pausing new offshore wind leasing activities in federal waters. A group of 18 Democratic attorneys general challenged the order, and the case is set for a hearing in Boston on Thursday.
In a statement Friday, the Oceantic Network, an offshore wind industry group, argued that the port projects defunded by the Trump administration would serve multiple industries, including defense, citing upgrades to the Port of Davisville in Rhode Island and Virginia’s Fairwinds Landing, which were expected to be multiuse sites.
“The Trump administration is weakening our country’s national security and destroying good-paying jobs by pulling critical funding designed to update our aging maritime infrastructure,” said Oceantic CEO Liz Burdock.
US Wind’s own wind farm, planned to be off the coast of Ocean City, has faced its own roadblocks of late.
US Wind won the final federal permit for the Ocean City project in the waning days of the Biden administration, but Trump’s Interior Department indicated in a court filing last week that it intends to revoke the major federal permit for the project that was years in the making.
The Town of Ocean City, which has mounted an aggressive campaign against the US Wind project, filed a lawsuit targeting that very permit. The federal government argued the town could pump the brakes, since Interior was planning to withdraw the permit anyway.
Ocean City’s mayor and council have also challenged an air pollution permit issued to US Wind by the state of Maryland — one of the last permits that the wind company needed to begin construction. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency also weighed in on the state-issued permit, arguing in an unconventional letter that the document should undergo an EPA appeals process — as opposed to state courts. Ocean City, accordingly, filed appeals in both places.
