Since taking office in January, President Trump has worked to fulfill a campaign promise to shut down the young offshore wind industry in the U.S. He stopped all federal permitting, and this week, his administration issued a stop-work order to a project under construction off the coast of New York.
These actions have sent a chill through the industry, and several wind developers have delayed or paused their work indefinitely.
In New England, which has some of the best conditions in the world for offshore wind, two large projects are under construction. A project completed last year off Long Island continues to generate electricity for the grid. The president’s policies are sowing uncertainty about their future.
Halting these projects would deal an especially hard blow to Massachusetts, which has made significant investments in offshore wind to create jobs, reduce climate pollution and generate power to fuel the future economy.
New England News Collaborative reporters visited three communities to find out what impact the offshore wind industry has had so far, and how they’re thinking about its future in this uncertain era.
Martha’s Vineyard
Cold rain is coming down in the island’s main port, Vineyard Haven, population 4,800.
Armed with an umbrella, local nonprofit leader Richard Andre looks out at a new pier. It was built for work boats heading out to Vineyard Wind, the first offshore wind farm to send power to Massachusetts.
Andre is president of Vineyard Power, a nonprofit that helped win local support for the wind farm.
The project has promised 90 jobs on the island. Andre says so far, about a dozen jobs have gone to island residents — a number expected to increase as wind technicians from other states “train the locals that then replace them,” Andre said.
Vineyard Wind began installing turbines 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard in 2023, and construction is ongoing. The company plans to build a total of 62 turbines, generating enough power for more than 400,000 homes.
Andre says in addition to the new jobs, Vineyard residents also benefit from the project by providing services, like the catering company that prepares meals for offshore workers. The wind farm has also brought industry to the waterfront, he says.
From the pier, it’s a short walk to the Vineyard Wind operations building, which houses a control center for the wind farm, locker rooms and warehouse space for parts.
Special zoning to protect maritime uses has kept touristy retail out of this stretch of waterfront for decades, but Andre says new maritime industry didn’t follow — until now.
“Nobody invested in the working waterfront because real estate prices are so high here,” he said. “And that’s why people are pretty much excited about offshore wind, because offshore wind is now effectively the first real industry that can actually invest in here, into a working waterfront.”
Because Vineyard Wind is already under construction, Trump’s ban on permitting hasn’t so far stopped the work.
And yet, the president’s opposition does seem to have some people keeping their heads down.
Vineyard Wind hasn’t issued a single press release since the election and declined to speak or confirm any information for this story.
The local company doing the catering didn’t want to talk, either.
Offshore wind opponents may be encouraged by the Trump administration, but here on Martha’s Vineyard, people are just carrying on — through a rainy day.
New Bedford
When the New Bedford Harbor Hotel opened six years ago, the owners were taking a risk. They launched a 70-room boutique hotel in a neighborhood with a lot of vacant stores and empty buildings.
But General Manager Kim O’Keefe says they were optimistic about offshore wind.
“We knew it was coming. We were starting to get excited, but it had been pushed off multiple times, so it was sort of like, ‘hold your breath and wait,’” O’Keefe remembers.
State officials had been talking for a long time about New Bedford becoming a hub for offshore wind construction. That finally came true in the spring of 2023, when turbines taller than skyscrapers started arriving in pieces in New Bedford. O’Keefe says the number of hotel reservations nearly doubled that season.
And the hotel gained a new clientele.
“We refer to them as the wind guys,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll have a group of 30 guys kind of sitting around the lobby area because they’re waiting on a helicopter to go out to sea … It’s just a really fun dynamic. They are a great group.”
The wind industry has brought a new professional class to downtown New Bedford. European engineers and executives visit the hotel, as do federal employees who regulate them. Construction workers building Vineyard Wind have also taken up residence.
But O’Keefe says this flurry of visitors has slowed as Vineyard Wind gets closer to completion, and President Trump holds up permits for new offshore wind farms.
It’s unclear if New Bedford will see a second wind project any time soon.
“We’re a little nervous with the current situation, so we’re hoping to see it continue to grow in the right direction. It was a huge impact on New Bedford, and we want to see that continue,” O’Keefe said.
Closer to the waterfront, other businesses have gotten a boost too. Shipyards are doing more repairs, and fuel businesses are selling more fuel. But in a few months, that could all dry up, as if the offshore wind bump never happened.
Salem
Salem may be best known as the Halloween hub of Massachusetts, but many in this community north of Boston are hoping to add another superlative to the city’s reputation: home to the first pier in the state capable of staging floating wind turbines.
If all goes as planned, the Salem Offshore Wind Terminal will be built on a 42-acre plot of land adjacent to Salem Harbor, sandwiched between a large natural gas power plant and a ferry station.
The area doesn’t look like much now — just a big field full of overgrown weeds and rocks. But when Bonnie Bain, executive director of the nonprofit Salem Alliance for the Environment, looks out over it, she has no trouble picturing a bustling wind port.
“You would see offshore wind components,” she says, like football field-length blades and the steel cylinders that comprise the turbine tower. “You’d see an electric crane, ships in the port — a really active wind marshaling facility.”
Bain sees a lot of symbolism in this particular parcel of land; she says it tells a bigger story about the transition from polluting fuels to cleaner ones.
Beginning in 1951, the site was home to one of the largest coal power plants in the region, the Salem Harbor Power Station. The facility — one of the so-called “filthy five” in the state — spewed pollution that contributed to health problems for people living nearby. It closed in 2014.
Since then, a smaller and less polluting natural gas plant has operated on part of the property, while the rest sat empty.
Now, it’s slated to become part of the shift to renewable energy.
The offshore wind pier is expected to generate millions in local tax revenue over several decades, and create hundreds of jobs in construction and turbine assembly, if it gets built, that is.
The pier is already behind schedule, and recent moves by the Trump administration have made everything feel up in the air.
“The sense that I’m getting is that everyone’s sort of taking a pause and taking it all in and trying to understand the landscape because things have been happening so rapidly,” Bain says.
Crowley Wind Services, the company developing the pier, declined an interview request but said in an email that it has the financing in order and anticipates the pier will be operational in 2027.
One person in Salem who hopes this will happen is Mayor Dominick Pangallo.
He grew up about a mile away from the coal plant and says he remembers how on windy days, the coal dust would blow around the neighborhood and settle on homes near the plant. So he’s excited about this renewable energy facility, which could also bring a big boost to the local economy.
“Salem has a deep and powerful connection to the ocean, and a legacy of using that connection to further our own economy and to better the lives of the people who live here,” he says. “There are challenges now for sure. We see them as speed bumps, not roadblocks, though.”
Pangallo says no one knows what will happen in the next four years. But he’s thinking about the next 40 years. And on that timeline, he’s convinced that Salem will be part of a robust offshore wind industry in Massachusetts and beyond.
This story was originally published by CAI. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
