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New Bedford is poised to play a long-term role in several offshore wind power projects. But some of those projects — and the economic activity they’d bring to the city — rely on the federal government issuing the requisite permits, and in a timely fashion. That’s become an uncertainty ahead of the presidential election, in which one candidate, former President Donald Trump, has attacked offshore wind, and vowed to sign an executive order halting it.
The offshore wind industry has made concrete progress in New England during the Biden administration, and the industry expects a continuation of that under a Kamala Harris presidency. That progress came after 20 years of delays, false starts and a lengthy runup that followed developers’ first proposed Massachusetts project in 2001.
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Since 2023, the industry has put major steel in the water at three projects off the region’s coast, including Vineyard Wind, which uses New Bedford as a staging port. One project, South Fork Wind, is finished and sending power to the New York grid.
Ships (and their crews), both foreign and domestic, have made many trips to New Bedford and New London, Connecticut, patronizing local hotels, restaurants and shoreside services, while union labor unloads major turbine components.
And state agencies and private investors have spent or earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to support a supply chain and port infrastructure for the further buildout of the industry. That’s especially true in New Bedford, with the expansion of one terminal, the building of another, and, potentially, a crane manufacturing facility.
“At the end of 2024, I feel I can safely say the fears we had about offshore wind stalling out didn’t materialize,” Ken Kimmell, chief development officer at Avangrid, told an audience during a wind conference in New Bedford last week, which drew many attendees from Europe. “But, obviously we face a big challenge ahead, which is, we’ve got to get the politics out of offshore wind.”
Offshore wind “is a climate necessity … it is an energy reliability necessity,” Kimmell continued. “There’s no alternative to it. The sooner we can get the politics out of it and get a consensus that this is needed, the better.”
Necessity was a common message shared at another wind conference this week in Atlantic City, hosted by the American Clean Power Association. Several speakers from government and the industry emphasized that energy from offshore wind farms is needed to support increased grid demand from the growth of data centers and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence.
“Will [Trump] simply neglect the industry, or will he actually attempt to undo projects that are well along in the permitting process?” asked Mayor Jon Mitchell in an interview with The Light. “That’s the big question, especially for those projects that have received state power purchase agreements or have received awards.”
Which wind projects could Trump slow or stop?
If Trump wins, a developer’s outlook for the next four years is likely to be informed by how far along its projects are in the federal permitting process, a lawyer who specializes in the offshore wind industry told The Light.
“I think for those projects in their infancy, the political forces at play from a changed administration are less material,” the industry lawyer said.
The Gulf of Maine projects, for example, are at least a decade away from fruition, and as such, could ride out four years of a less-friendly Trump presidency.
Projects under construction, and those that have already received key permits, may be too far along to stop, though uncertainty remains over what a Trump administration could do, the lawyer said.
Projects that are in the middle of key permitting may face more risk than nearly finished projects or those that are just getting started. Those projects would likely experience “the most heightened” anxiety if the next presidential administration is oppositional or less willing to work with the industry to move projects forward, the lawyer said.
For example, in 2019, during the Trump administration, Vineyard Wind faced permitting setbacks. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management decided to undertake further study of the potential impacts of the project, holding up a key permit.
Soon after, Vineyard Wind announced it was pulling its project out of federal review; the Trump administration declared the review “terminated,” State House News reported.
However, less than a month into the Biden presidency, which has been very supportive of wind energy, BOEM announced it was resuming its review of the project. It later greenlighted Vineyard Wind for construction.
The wind industry lawyer said a Trump administration could cause delays again. Trump could appoint agency heads who could decide whether certain permitting reviews are sufficient, or direct BOEM to pause leasing to undertake a programmatic review of its leasing activities.
A Trump administration Department of Justice could less vigorously challenge some of the several lawsuits against wind projects and the government agencies permitting them. Or it could voluntarily agree to take another look at the issue being contested in court (which could mean undertaking another time-intensive environmental analysis).
All of that can add time to the process, which can create further uncertainty and increase project costs for the industry.
“There is no doubt that the trajectory of the U.S. offshore wind industry will be impacted by the November election,” said Liz Burdock, CEO of Oceantic Network, in an email to The Light. “Its outcome will influence how we maintain our momentum.”
The Oceantic Network, in a recent report, said more than $20 billion has been invested in the industry’s supply chain since the end of 2020, but it noted that private investment had slowed down, “due largely to the uncertainty” around who will be president in 2025.
Trump and Harris on wind
In May of this year, during a rally with supporters, Trump vowed to sign an executive order halting offshore wind on his first day in office: “We are going to make sure that that ends on day one,” he said.
The wind industry lawyer said Trump could use an executive order to pause offshore wind leasing. The timing of offshore wind site auctions is at the discretion of BOEM, and no law or regulation requires the agency to conduct the auctions.
President Joe Biden, in 2021, issued an executive order directing the Interior Secretary to halt oil and gas leasing, though it was overturned in federal court a year and a half later. His administration later offered the fewest oil and gas lease sales in the program’s history.
The lawyer speculated that Trump could use the blade failure at Vineyard Wind, for example, as grounds to enact a similar order on offshore wind leasing.
This month, in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Trump attempted to link whale deaths with offshore wind projects (something he has done before).
Though scientists have expressed legitimate concern about potential harm that offshore wind projects could have on endangered species, including the North Atlantic right whale, federal agencies have not found a direct causal link between whale deaths and offshore wind activity.
“They say the wind drives them crazy,” Trump told Rogan. “You know it’s a vibration because you have those, those things are 50-story buildings, some of them. … I want to be a whale psychiatrist. It drives the whales freaking crazy. Something happens with them, but for whatever reason they’re getting washed up on shore and yet the environmentalists don’t talk about it.”
With Trump and offshore wind, it hasn’t been just talk. Personally (and before becoming president), he sued to halt an offshore wind farm in Scotland that is visible from his golf course (he lost in court).
With Vice President Harris, however, the industry expects the status quo and a continuation of Biden policies and approaches, which have helped projects and accelerated permitting.
A position paper on Harris’ campaign website promises to build on the Biden administration’s clean energy progress. Her goals include “continuing to invest in a thriving clean energy economy” and ”cutting red tape so that clean energy projects are completed quickly and efficiently.”
Additionally, the Interior Department enacted a “modernization” rule this year for renewable energy that has created more certainty and flexibility for projects, and streamlined the permitting process.
At the Atlantic City conference, Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions (which has more than 3 million members) gave opening remarks in favor of a Harris administration.
“The expectation from us, and based on our relationship and our conversations with the vice president, is there will be consistency of the Biden-Harris administration policies, especially when it comes to the Inflation Reduction Act,” McGarvey said.
The IRA, which Trump has criticized, has allowed wind developers to secure lucrative tax credits that have significantly helped project financing.
Mayor Mitchell said he wonders if support from labor unions could help maintain momentum for offshore wind, even in a Trump presidency, as unions have been getting jobs with projects on the East Coast.
McGarvey said the union members were initially reluctant to work for the wind industry, largely because the pay was significantly less than what they earned working for other, established industries.
“Through the work of the Inflation Reduction Act … we were able to get labor standards and registered apprenticeship utilization through those tax credits for the first time,” he told the audience. “That has changed the attitude of the membership.”
“Everything depends on next Tuesday. A Harris-Walz win next Tuesday is good news for the offshore wind industry,” McGarvey continued. He also recounted his experience meeting and working for Trump on his properties. “There are certain things that are stuck in his brain, and one of them is, he really doesn’t like windmills.”
Election could affect Port of New Bedford
With the offshore installation of Vineyard Wind and pre-construction work for other projects, a stream of heavy lift vessels, barges, and geophysical survey ships have transited in and out of New Bedford’s port.
But in an interview with The Light, Mitchell said port activity along New Bedford’s waterfront would likely drop if Trump is re-elected. His administration could delay project approvals, which in turn would delay the construction and maintenance work that’s been committed to New Bedford.
Massachusetts, along with Rhode Island, recently awarded contracts to SouthCoast Wind, Vineyard Wind 2, and New England Wind (phases 1 and 2). All three projects have issued letters of intent to use the under-construction New Bedford Foss Marine Terminal for operations and maintenance work, which is meant to last as long as the turbines operate — or about three decades.
SouthCoast Wind plans to use the MassCEC terminal in the city to marshal the major wind turbine components, an activity currently underway for Vineyard Wind 1. And New England Wind 1, which will stage the major turbine components out of a new terminal in Salem (which MassCEC is partly funding), plans to use New Bedford for support services.
Avangrid announced plans with Danish manufacturer Liftra, earlier this year, to build a “first-in-the-nation” crane building site at South Coast Mills in the South End. But it is contingent on the projects moving forward.
“I think a lot of people are holding their breaths right now with the presidential election,” said Mitchell at the wind conference in New Bedford last week.
He also expressed concern on the impact any slowdown under a second Trump term could have on New Bedford’s position among other ports along the East Coast: “It might undermine one of our advantages. … If there is a four-year pause in the United States, it might allow other ports to catch up to us.”
Mitchell said he will remain focused on tapping into offshore wind to attract more capital and economic growth to the gateway city.
“We will continue to build out port infrastructure,” he said. “It’s just the level of activity won’t be what we anticipate, or would like to see, if Trump gets elected.”
The Biden administration has set a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts (30,000 megawatts) of offshore wind energy by 2030. Experts say it is unlikely the country can meet those goals by then.
Still, since 2020, the federal government has greenlit 10 projects for construction — a figure the Biden-Harris administration and BOEM have touted in press releases. Altogether, they would create 15 gigawatts of offshore wind power for the East Coast.
With less than three months left in the Biden administration, BOEM held another auction this week that sold four out of eight leases in the Gulf of Maine. On the permitting side, the agency may be able to move projects further along before a possible sea change in January.
Beyond that, BOEM published plans to hold lease auctions in the Gulf of Maine, Central Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, California and Hawaii between 2025 and 2028 — all during the next presidential administration. This lease schedule, however, is not legally binding.
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
Trump is going to stop a lot of things.
Like going to jail.