Amid a flurry of executive actions on his first day in office, President Donald Trump sought to put the brakes on offshore wind, halting the federal permitting of wind farms and wind-energy leasing of the Outer Continental Shelf.
On Cape Cod and the South Coast, where offshore wind is becoming part of the local economy, supporters and opponents are talking about what the order will mean.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said the city’s position — supporting and courting offshore wind, but also challenging wind-farm locations fishermen view as unacceptable — has been informed by a desire to create jobs in New Bedford. And those jobs could be in jeopardy.
“If this goes as far as it conceivably could, this order — there will be some people who’ll lose their jobs,” he said.
But the mayor of Vineyard Wind’s primary construction port doesn’t oppose every piece of Trump’s order.
Mitchell said some of the lease areas off New York and the Mid-Atlantic warrant review because of their conflicts with commercial fishing.
While Trump did not immediately end construction of wind farms that are fully permitted, his order does call for a government review that could accomplish that, by terminating wind-area leases.
South of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, Vineyard Wind and New England Wind 1 have completed the permitting process, and Vineyard Wind is under construction.
The status of another project selected for a Massachusetts contract, SouthCoast Wind, is less certain. Although the Biden administration approved its construction and operations plan Friday — providing the final approval required from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the primary agency involved in offshore wind permitting — SouthCoast Wind still needs three other, less involved permits.
Those are required under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Clean Water Act, and Rivers and Harbors Act.
Members of New Bedford’s scallop fleet — a lucrative fishery that has made the city the top-value fishing port in the country — welcomed Trump’s order.
“We finally have been listened to, by someone in an administration,” said Eric Hansen, who owns two New Bedford scallop vessels. “We've been fighting wind power for quite some time, and everything seems to be fast-tracked. Now they're going to take a pause and really look at it.”
Drew Minkiewicz, a lawyer who represents about 150 scallop vessels as part of a group called the Sustainable Scalloping Fund, two-thirds of which are based in New Bedford, said scallopers have been worried about offshore wind areas encroaching on scallop grounds, especially in the Mid-Atlantic.
“Having that halted for at least the next four years, that’s a bit of a relief,” he said.
Meanwhile, wind supporters say Trump’s order represents a setback for the clean-energy transition.
“It certainly puts a chill into the air, in terms of financing and construction,” said Chris Powicki, an energy consultant on Cape Cod. He calls this “a dark moment.”
He said if the Trump administration stops wind projects that are ready to build, the industry will essentially close down, at least for the next four years.
“And that will delay progress toward the state's goals, and to national goals, of addressing our climate change issues,” he said.
If Trump ends tax credits for offshore wind, the projects selected in the latest round of Massachusetts bidding may not be viable at prices now under negotiation, Powicki said.
“If those [tax credits] go away, then I don't think the projects will move forward,” he said.
But Mitchell said energy projects around the country have been built with the benefit of tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, so getting rid of them might be a hard sell, even for some Republicans.
"Speaker [Mike] Johnson noted the other day that the House is likely to take a scalpel, and not an ax, to the IRA,” the mayor said. “That's my hope as well.”
