Opinion: Offshore wind is alive and well. But keep quiet about it

Is it possible the predictions of the death of offshore wind power — one of our single best tools in the fight against climate change — were wrong?

While fossil fuel lobbyists and wealthy waterfront landowners in beachfront communities were cheering on the impending death of clean energy, a funny thing happened: Turbines continued going up, large-scale projects got built and began turning wind into electricity, and the wind projects continued their progress toward construction.

Dominion Energy continues — quietly — to work toward completing the nation’s largest offshore wind project after battling years of fossil-fuel funded opposition and weathering the Trump administration’s repeated — albeit inconsistent — moves to shut down wind. Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is more than halfway complete. In many ways, between the jobs, the power and the investment, it may simply be too big to fail.

With 176 turbines, the $6 billion project will power 660,000 homes with clean energy when finished in 2026. It has already created 2,000 jobs and stands as proof that offshore wind is alive and well.

So while the naysayers were busy writing obituaries, offshore wind continued to do what it was always meant to do: generate power, create jobs, and help secure a livable future.

Meanwhile the most audacious attack on offshore wind, a stop work order from the Trump administration against New York’s Empire Wind, was rescinded earlier this month. That project is now back under construction. Empire has created 1,500 jobs and will power half-a-million New York homes when completed in 2028. To the extent reports that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to fresh consideration of one or more fracked gas pipelines in exchange for allowing Empire to proceed are accurate, such ill-advised and outdated proposals face major obstacles, including stiff public opposition. Meanwhile, construction of the critical clean energy that New York actually needs proceeds in the form of Empire Wind.

Revolution Wind, 15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island, began work two years ago and is on target to be finished and powering 350,000 homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island by next year. Revolution has faced an onslaught of legal attacks from wealthy waterfront owners concerned about their ocean views. But at least for now, the project has been safe from Trump’s anti-wind attacks. And again, size and economic clout may have helped keep the project viable. Revolution has spent more than $100 million shoreside redeveloping waterfront in both Connecticut and Rhode Island and, by creating 1,500 jobs, has strong political and union support.

Finally, there is Vineyard Wind.

After a devastating turbine break stopped construction in July, Vineyard Wind has quietly — very quietly — managed to get back to work. Their project will power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts, revitalize the port of New Bedford, and generate 2,000 jobs. The project is also generating electricity — though how much is impossible to establish since the developer, possibly in response to the high-profile attacks on wind by the Trump administration, has opted to answer few questions about the work, the progress, the number of turbines in operation, or the resulting power.

Each of these projects has — so far — survived in the face of relentless attacks from the Trump administration, fossil fuel proponents, and greenwashed fronts. Baseless charges that wind power kills whales; lawsuits targeting transmission cables, substations and transmission cables; phony ‘grassroots’ organizations bankrolled by waterfront homeowners and/or oil and gas companies; attacks by the Trump bureaucracy — all so far have failed.

Silence about success and ongoing work seems to be a part of the strategy for offshore wind developers — and maybe you can’t blame them.

One of the directors of the Dominion project said simply this week that continued construction came from “keeping our head down” and keeping the project away from any fanfare. Dominion has also managed to keep working by touting offshore wind not as clean, green or planet saving — which, of course, it is — but simply as homegrown American power. Like federal biologists and health experts, offshore wind developers have learned not to bring the benefits of clean air and cuts to pollution into their conversations.

They can’t say it. But we can: When these four projects go on-line in the next three years, they will power two million homes while taking millions of tons of carbon pollution out of the air we breathe — the equivalent of taking 2,300,000 cars off the road. That means less asthma, better heart health, and a planet moving further from a future marked by increasing heat and drought, flooding and erosion, real damage to marine life, and more houses being swallowed by a rising ocean.

Jobs, measurable economic impact, and the promise of reliable domestic power — these may be keeping offshore wind on track to survive the current headwinds and thrive when the coast is clear. But for now, just don’t say out loud that it could also help protect our health and save the planet.

Kate Sinding Daly is senior vice president for law and policy at Conservation Law Foundation.