The Local 7 union hall in South Boston is the place to be if you’re an ironworker. On a recent Tuesday around lunchtime, people — mostly men — wearing heavy work boots and hard hats came in from nearby job sites, greeting each other with a slap on the back, a smile and a string of profanities.
Rachel Jackson is one of the few women in the union, but the 32-year-old can rib her “brothers” with the best of them. It’s a good thing, she said, because when she is working offshore on wind turbines, she is usually the only woman on the crew.
“I’m actually obsessed with being the only woman on the job,” she said. “I’m not trying to be cute. I’m not on a date. And we’re burping and laughing and it’s just where I want to be.”
On this particular afternoon, Jackson, who has dyed her short hair blue and sports several face and neck tattoos, headed to the shop, a big open room full of heavy machinery, safety gear and tools. She was preparing to go offshore for a month to work on Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project that will provide power to Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Many Northeast states, including Massachusetts, are counting on offshore wind to create thousands of jobs, combat climate change and help keep the lights on in the coming decades as demand for electricity grows. But state officials, wind developers, workers and advocates described a sense of unease about what the outcome of the upcoming presidential election could mean for an industry still trying to find its footing in the U.S.
This will be Jackson’s third tour on Revolution Wind, and she was anxious to get back out on the water. The offshore lifestyle isn’t for everyone, she said, but it suits her.
She loves the predictability of her schedule — 12 hours on, 12 hours off. She loves meeting people from around the world, and feeling like she’s doing something good for the planet. Plus, it pays well.
But Jackson is nervous about job security. The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has long made clear his disdain for offshore wind. At a rally this spring in New Jersey, Trump said if he wins the November election, he’ll issue an executive order to “end” wind energy “on day one.”
“I do not want him to pull us out of this opportunity because it is work, and it could be something that is beneficial to the environment,” Jackson said.
She is not the only one fretting about the industry’s future.
“There is a lot at stake with the election this fall for offshore wind,” said Kris Ohleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent think tank that supports the industry. “(Vice President) Kamala Harris is a strong proponent of clean energy, versus, the clear contrast of a candidate who said — quote — on day one — quote — he will do everything in his power to stop offshore wind.”
So far, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has not offered a detailed offshore wind platform, but experts like Ohleth expect she would continue President Joe Biden’s policies aimed at jumpstarting the industry in the U.S. and getting thousands of turbines up and running by the end of the decade.
A Trump win, meanwhile, could yield more risk for the industry. Ohleth and other experts WBUR consulted said it’s unlikely Trump could stop wind farms that are already operating or revoke permits for those under construction, but he could create obstacles for projects still in the pipeline.
For example, he could slow-walk the federal permitting process, as he did in his first term, or rescind lucrative clean energy tax credits that wind developers rely on. His rhetoric alone could create enough uncertainty that big banks and other investors get nervous about loaning billions of dollars to finance wind farms.
If Trump wins, “we should all fasten our seatbelts,” said Eric Hines, director of the offshore wind energy graduate program at Tufts University. “There will there will be more drama to come, just as there has been up to date.”
Still, Hines does not believe a second Trump presidency would sink the industry.
“I think the idea that something that’s 20, 30 years in the making, and has such buy-in at the state level — I don’t see that disappearing into a puff of smoke anytime soon,” he said.
The sense of strong state “buy-in” is what keeps wind developers from fearing the worst, too. Several developers with projects along the Atlantic coast said while they are nervous about how a Trump White House could impact their business, they’re not panicking. Offshore wind may not be as firmly established in this country as the onshore wind or solar industries, but there are other forces pulling in its favor.
For one, momentum is picking up around the country. Projects so far have been concentrated on the East Coast, but the federal government set the industry in motion in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California in recent years by holding auctions to lease parcels of the ocean for wind development.
Offshore wind is “setting up to be a major driver of economic activity,” said John Hensley, an analyst at the American Clean Power Association, a clean energy trade group. “And it’s not just about building these turbines offshore. There’s a whole ecosystem that’s coming together around the offshore wind energy space.”
The American Clean Power Association published a report in July 2024 that outlined the widespread economic benefits of a robust offshore wind industry and supply chain. It found, for instance, that between now and the end of the decade, offshore wind could spur $65 billion worth of investment around the country and create close to 56,000 jobs.
Hensley said some of this investment and job growth is already happening outside of the Northeast. He pointed to a steel manufacturing facility in Kentucky, a cable factory in South Carolina and several specialized vessel manufacturing operations in Louisiana and Texas.
“Once you firmly establish the market, there’s going to be this proliferation across the entire economy in terms of companies and businesses that are helping to service the offshore wind industry,” Hensley said.
In May, Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana — who has endorsed Trump for president — helped celebrate the country’s first American-built offshore wind service operations vessel, the ECO EDISON, which was constructed in his district.
Many states that typically vote Republican are already “enjoying the benefits” of a growing offshore wind supply chain, Ohleth said. “And I think those states will continue to lobby for that type of manufacturing and job creation.”
States may provide another important buffer to a White House that’s unfriendly to offshore wind because they simply need this power.
“It’s really important to remember that energy policy in this country, by and large, happens in the states,” Hines of Tufts University said.
Many states, but especially those in the Northeast, have ambitious plans for offshore wind. In New England, where electricity demand is expected to double by mid-century, officials are banking on offshore wind to provide a significant portion of their power. With current technology, the only feasible alternative would be to build many more natural gas pipelines and power plants that exacerbate climate change and which experts say are very unlikely to get approval.
“Offshore wind is vital for us to meet our clean energy and climate goals,” said Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Rebecca Tepper. “Whether it’s Trump or anybody else, we need to keep our eye on the ball and keep trying to move the industry forward in whatever ways we can.”
Tepper said there is a lot that states can do even if offshore wind stalls at the federal level. They can redesign port areas for staging future projects. They can build out the onshore electrical grid to support an influx of power from turbines in the ocean. And they can increase demand by signing new electricity contracts with wind developers.
Massachusetts and other states have been nudging the Biden administration to make as much progress as possible before the end of the year on permitting new projects and leasing new areas of the ocean for development, Tepper said.
“I think getting this done as soon as we can is the key thing,” she said.
Later this month, the federal government is scheduled to hold the first competitive offshore wind auction in the Gulf of Maine — an area that extends from southern Maine to Cape Cod. The plan is to lease eight parcels of the ocean, totaling 850,000 acres, which could be used to generate an estimated 13 gigawatts of power. That’s enough electricity for about 4.5 million homes.
Massachusetts alone hopes to eventually secure 10 gigawatts of power from the new lease areas.
Along the East Coast, there are signs of the industry’s momentum. From Massachusetts to Virginia, workers like Jackson are building turbines, and electricity from offshore wind has started flowing into the grid.
About 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, wind advocate Amber Hewett stood on the deck of a boat and stared at the horizon. Ahead, some two dozen turbines poked out of the water like stick figures — the Vineyard Wind project, the first large-scale offshore wind farm to begin construction in the U.S.
“I feel like we just drove to Europe,” she said. “This is a really inspiring moment for me to see this many offshore wind turbines in U.S. waters.”
Hewett leads the National Wildlife Federation’s offshore wind program and has followed the industry for a decade. There have been a lot of ups and downs. Vineyard Wind itself hit a snag this summer when a turbine blade snapped, plummeting into the water and washing up in pieces on Nantucket’s beaches. Limited construction on the project continues, but the turbines have ceased turning while the federal government investigates the incident.
Still she said, seeing Vineyard Wind up close felt like glimpsing the future.
“Nothing is inevitable, she said. “But this is too promising of an opportunity to ever really be stopped in its tracks.”
This story was originally published by WBUR. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
