Former President Donald Trump’s impending 2025 return to the White House sent shock waves through the U.S. offshore wind industry and was hailed by its foes, who look forward to Trump’s campaign promise to shut down projects “on day one.”
“The incoming administration has a historic opportunity to save American workers from foreign developers, reinvigorate iconic coastal towns, and improve America’s food security,” said Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, on Wednesday morning.
“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said at a May 11 rally in Wildwood, N.J., where he pledged to halt turbine projects. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”
Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric against them, wind power advocates tried to make a case for continuation.
“Eight years ago, the first Trump administration laid out the fundamental framework for our modern offshore wind industry and oversaw seven federal lease sales that netted $456 million for the federal treasury. Industry responded by making the first supply chain investments that are now creating jobs in Texas and South Carolina,” said Liz Burdock, CEO of the industry group Oceantic Network.
“Oceantic looks forward to working with the Trump-Vance administration and the new Congress to advance our nation’s economy, combat rising costs, and deliver more domestic energy,” said Burdock.
Early in the first Trump administration, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke touted those early investments in offshore wind – despite his boss’s earlier history of hostility to projects near a golf club he owned in Scotland . After Trump’s 2020 election loss Department of Interior officials reversed support for offshore wind and sought to cancel permits for the ongoing Vineyard Wind project off southern New England.
The incoming Biden administration reinstated the permitting for Vineyard Wind, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management launched a four-year effort to expand wind power leasing in quest of building 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power potential by 2030.
With the industry apparently bound for another whiplash in 2025, renewable energy companies saw their share prices sink Wednesday morning.
Wind power critics exulted in the results. Leeman of NEFSA said commercial fishermen have a further wish list for a new Trump administration.
“The new administration should delist unleased wind energy areas in the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, and the Mid-Atlantic, among other places,” said Leeman. “Regulators attempted to “future-proof” their development plans by designating thousands of square miles of ocean as wind energy areas, without any attending regulations to rescind those approvals. These anti-democratic measures should not survive the first 100 days.”
The Oceantic Network cast the struggle as an issue of U.S. jobs.
“With President Trump in office, we have the opportunity to harness even more investment and measurable economic benefits for communities across the country. The U.S. offshore wind industry stands ready to welcome new investments in American factories and shipyards.”
