Wind turbines generate electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm in 2022 near Block Island, R.I. Many East Coast states are relying on planned offshore wind projects to provide much of their power in the coming decades. But President Donald Trump’s attacks on offshore wind have been a major setback for the industry. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
As President Donald Trump wages an all-out assault on offshore wind projects, state leaders face a dilemma: Do they pull the plug on offshore wind and look for other ways to meet their fast-growing energy needs? Or do they double down on their investments, in hopes of helping the industry rebound after Trump leaves office?
Many states along the East Coast have been counting on offshore wind to provide a large portion of their electricity needs in the decades ahead. They’ve invested billions of dollars in growing the industry and getting projects off the ground.
But offshore wind has a particular vulnerability: The federal government is the landlord.
Nearly all offshore wind projects are more than 3 miles offshore, in ocean waters managed by federal agencies. That gives Trump a much more direct path to blocking such projects than for onshore wind and solar projects on private lands. Already, he has done more to stymie offshore wind than many observers thought was possible, including an order to stop work on a wind farm off Rhode Island that was nearly complete.
“This is one of the few areas where states are not in full control of their own energy destiny,” said New York state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat. “This administration is always looking for leverage points to try to squeeze, and this is a vulnerable one for us.”
State leaders are not yet backing away from their commitments to offshore wind, saying it still has massive long-term potential. But they acknowledge Trump has shown the industry’s vulnerability to political interference, which could scare away investors and developers.
For now, lawmakers say their offshore wind plans have had a massive setback, one that could threaten grid reliability and drive up energy bills. While some state leaders have filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s orders, some say they may need to start looking to other energy sources if offshore wind stalls out.
Since he took office, Trump has halted leases for new wind projects, canceled $679 million in funding to support manufacturing and ports, ended clean energy tax credits and announced plans to cancel the approval of a Maryland offshore wind project.
Most drastically, Trump last month ordered crews to stop work on Revolution Wind, a project off the coast of Rhode Island that is 80% complete. Industry leaders say the order to abandon a nearly finished project was unprecedented. Dozens of turbines already have been erected, with others staged at a nearby pier. More than 50 workers were taken off their planned two-week shift installing new turbines, the CT Mirror reported. One construction crew with about 20 members was left stranded at sea, unable to work, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“This is very much further than was deemed possible or realistic,” said Sam Salustro, senior vice president of policy and market affairs with Oceantic Network, an industry lobbying group. “The self-destruction is beyond our scope of imagination at the beginning of the year.
A National Renewable Energy Laboratory map illustrates the North Atlantic offshore wind projects in the production pipeline as of August 2024. (Offshore Wind Market Report: 2024 Edition. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.)
It’s a massive amount of power that’s just being held back by the federal government.”
State and industry leaders have filed lawsuits seeking to finish work on the Revolution Wind project, arguing Trump has overstepped his authority.
While five East Coast offshore wind farms are in the construction phase, dozens more projects are still in the planning and permitting stages. States have been counting on those projects to power millions of homes, but those plans have hit a dead end with Trump in the White House. What’s less clear is whether the industry can outlast Trump and bounce back after he leaves office.
“[Trump’s actions] are designed to create so much uncertainty and risk that the industry does not rebound under a different administration,” said Timothy Fox, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, an independent research firm. “Even if a future administration attempts to revive offshore wind development, developers and financiers are likely to be wary of investing in a sector with long lead times and such demonstrable election risks.”
Trump has long opposed offshore wind, repeating false claims that it harms whales, is unreliable and drives up energy costs. His opposition appeared to originate with the construction of an offshore wind farm near his golf course in Scotland, which he deemed an eyesore.
The White House did not respond to a Stateline interview request.
State plans
For many East Coast states, offshore wind has become a critical piece of their energy plans. With limited areas on land that are suited for large-scale energy development, lawmakers have turned to sea-based projects — which also offer the advantage of strong ocean winds. State leaders say such projects could harness massive amounts of power, which is urgently needed as data centers and artificial intelligence drive up electricity demands.
In total, eight East Coast states have committed to building more than 45 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040 — enough to power more than 30 million homes.
Some states have invested heavily in overhauling ports, building factories and creating workforce development programs to help the industry get on its feet. Officials say the young industry is already creating thousands of manufacturing jobs and reviving coastal economies.
But now that progress has come to a crashing halt.
The Revolution Wind project in the federal waters off Rhode Island had been expected to provide more than 700 megawatts of electricity starting next year, representing about 2.5% of the power across New England.
The mid- and South Atlantic had more than 25 offshore wind projects in the pipeline a year ago. (Offshore Wind Market Report: 2024 Edition. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.)
Trump’s order to stop work on the Revolution Wind project invoked unspecified “national security interests,” with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum later claiming that undersea drones could escape radar detection by attacking through a wind farm. Offshore wind developers noted that the project already received extensive reviews and approvals from the Department of Defense and other agencies.
Canceling the project could threaten the reliability of the region’s power grid, New England’s grid operator, ISO New England, said in a statement last month.
“I am really concerned that the cancellation or delay of this project could cause a spike in energy market costs and an impact to the reliability of the grid,” Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, told Stateline. “There aren’t just other projects in the works that can be swapped in.”
Dykes said Trump’s order has made investors hesitant to support other energy projects, given Trump’s attempt to halt Revolution Wind even after years of planning, permitting and construction.
The attorneys general in Connecticut and Rhode Island have joined project developers in suing the Trump administration, hoping to force the completion of the project.
The self-destruction is beyond our scope of imagination at the beginning of the year. It’s a massive amount of power that’s just being held back by the federal government.
– Sam Salustro, senior vice president of policy and market affairs, Oceantic Network, a wind energy industry group
Last week, Burgum said his agency would be “taking a deep look” at the five wind farms already under construction, CNBC reported, blaming an “ideologically driven permitting process” that allowed them to move forward. While threatening those projects, he also said the administration is “under discussion” with the governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut about allowing work to continue on Revolution Wind.
Trump’s administration previously issued a stop-work order in April for the Empire Wind 1 offshore project in New York, but relented the following month and allowed construction to proceed. That reversal appeared to follow a deal with Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to build a gas pipeline in New York, Politico reported.
But Trump’s refusal to issue new permits has halted other pending projects in New York state, said Gounardes, the state senator, making it impossible for the state to reach its target of 9 gigawatts by 2035. Hochul’s recent push for more nuclear power, he said, is likely a pivot to other forms of energy without carbon emissions.
Not giving up
Meanwhile, Trump’s administration has signaled that it will revoke permits for a Maryland project that has not yet started construction. State leaders in Maryland have committed to building 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035. With Trump’s delays, that timeline is now out of reach, said Democratic state Del. Lorig Charkoudian, who authored the law setting that target.
For now, she said, state leaders should focus on building transmission infrastructure, enabling offshore wind to connect to the grid quickly if a new administration enables projects to move forward.
“Nobody’s giving up,” Charkoudian said. “Offshore wind is critical to our energy future. There’s still a lot of work for our states to be doing so we’re ahead of the game when we finally get sanity back in Washington.”
Earlier this month, the Democratic governors of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island issued a joint statement praising the industry’s boost to the manufacturing sector and calling on Trump to uphold federal permits that have been issued for offshore wind projects.
But some state leaders are worried about the industry’s viability.
“[Trump’s actions] could be a massive blow,” said Massachusetts state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Democrat who has sponsored legislation to support the deployment of offshore wind. “It will be hard to recover from. It won’t just be, ‘Here’s a Democratic president restoring everything.’”
Industry analysts noted that projects can take nearly a decade to complete. Even under a friendly administration, investors and developers may now be hesitant to sink billions of dollars into projects that can be abruptly canceled if the next president doesn’t like them.
Eldridge said Massachusetts is embracing all forms of renewable energy, including solar and hydropower from Canada. If offshore wind is delayed, he said, leaders may need to focus on energy efficiency and reducing power consumption.
Virginia leaders have committed to building 5.2 gigawatts of offshore wind projects by the end of 2034. That goal will be “desperately hard to meet,” said state Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat who chairs the Commerce and Labor Committee.
“If I were an investor, I would certainly be worried about [the future of offshore wind],” he said.
Deeds said it’s too soon to say whether Virginia will need to adjust its energy planning, especially as it deals with an influx of data centers that are driving up electricity demand. He said lawmakers currently are more focused on Trump’s cuts to food stamps and Medicaid.
While some state leaders say their timelines for offshore wind will now be impossible to meet, none have publicly backed away from their long-term goals.
Industry leaders say there’s much that states can be doing now to help the industry rebound after Trump leaves office.
“If we have to wait the next three years, there’s a lot of work that can be done on the state side,” said Alicia Gené Artessa, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, an industry group.
She called on states to continue building transmission infrastructure to coastal areas and investing in workforce development programs for offshore wind.
Salustro, with the Oceantic Network, noted that many Republicans have embraced offshore wind and the jobs it has created. The current battle over offshore wind is largely driven by “one person’s personality,” he said, giving him hope the industry can outlast Trump.
“The basic economics are going to prevail long term,” he said.
Despite their misgivings, many state lawmakers largely share that view.
“It’s too early to pull the plug on the future of offshore wind,” said Gounardes, the New York senator. “The wind is always going to blow no matter who’s president, and we should be poised to take advantage of that so that when the administration changes, we’re not a decade behind.”
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.
