While offshore wind has faced the ire of Donald Trump for years, culminating with expected rollbacks of federal support in just a few weeks’ time, the industry remains surprisingly optimistic that the renewable power source will play a key role in the president-elect’s energy strategy. 

Trump has repeatedly vowed to target offshore wind, blocking new projects and federal funding for the industry in his new administration. During a May campaign rally in New Jersey, the Republican promised to take action on this during his first day in office through an executive order. 

He has accused offshore wind turbines of destroying “everything,” calling offshore wind “the most expensive energy there is.” Trump, who has rallied against offshore wind since before his first presidency, has also accused the clean energy turbines of killing whales due to vibrations and noise — something the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has denied. 

Fellow critics of the industry have accused the Biden administration of engaging in favoritism toward offshore wind, calling it “counterproductive” due to its intermittent nature.

“No matter how strongly the wind blows, it’s only going to provide a certain amount of energy,” James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “That’s far less than the concentrated energy in a piece of coal or in oil and natural gas … if wind power and solar power had more concentrated energy content, I’d be all for them. I don’t really care which energy winds out or which industry winds out. I just want to make sure that we have affordable and reliable energy.” 

With less than a month remaining until Trump takes office, his anti-offshore wind rhetoric has already influenced the market. In November, the CEO of TotalEnergies said it planned to pause the construction of its offshore wind farm located off the coast of New York due to the president-elect’s remarks. 

However, others within the industry aren’t ready to give up just yet. 

Keep moving forward

Across the United States, there are around 37 leases with more than 56,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity under development, according to the American Clean Power Association. This is roughly equivalent to the same amount of energy needed to power 22 million homes. 

Projects that are in the final stages of permitting or are in the middle of construction, particularly off the coasts of Virginia and Louisiana, are likely to be untouched by the incoming administration. Representatives for Dominion Energy, which is handling the construction of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, told the Washington Examiner the company is still on track to install turbines sometime early next year. Once completed, the wind farm is expected to consist of 176 turbines that will generate enough power for up to 600,000 homes. 

Off Louisiana’s coast, German energy company RWE also recently said its plans to build a 2,000-megawatt wind farm remain unchanged. This is largely due to the fact that because the timeline to construct the wind farm is so long — with a planned operational date in the mid-2030s — any permitting and construction hurdles it may face will come after Trump’s second term. 

For Hillary Bright, executive director of the offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward, the focus over the next four years should remain on keeping these projects on track. 

“I want to see those projects continue over the next four years…and continue that momentum of driving investments to a domestic supply chain, which ultimately has the opportunity to support a lot more than offshore wind, steel, cement, some of these really providing domestic strength,” Bright told the Washington Examiner. 

She added that the industry should try to “do business as usual” in order to support the regions currently relying on these projects. 

“I think it’s really critical for the industry to continue working with local communities to ensure that the energy and the benefits that we truly see as beneficial to the communities are actually delivered,” said Bright.

Hurdles outside of Trump 

A halt on federal funding for offshore wind — temporary or not — isn’t the only hurdle the industry has to face going into the next administration. Surprisingly, the Biden administration, which pushed to expand the industry, has left many developers and projects in the lurch due to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. 

The Democratic-passed legislation included a measure, Section 50265, that limits when and whether the Bureau of Ocean Management can issue a lease for offshore wind development following a lease sale. It specifically requires the Department of the Interior to have offered offshore oil and gas development leases totaling at least 60 million acres in the previous year before issuing leases for offshore wind. 

Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, told the Washington Examiner this provision has put the wind industry in a “bit of jeopardy” as the current administration has massively pulled back on oil and gas lease sales in federal waters. 

“Because you have these gaps [in oil and gas], you are creating gaps in the wind leasing as well,” Milito said. “So we’re in a tough situation.” 

He admitted that within the industry, there has been less interest in new lease sales. If future administrations were to encourage more, Milito recommended putting the focus on projects currently under construction and getting them online. 

“Get everyone comfortable with it, and once that happens, I think — you know — some of this opposition we’ve seen should abate,” he said. 

As the U.S. looks to get ahead in the wind industry on a global level, industry players also pointed to federal red tape contributing to slower progress. 

This month, Congress failed to pass the market-desired permitting reform legislation proposed by Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY), primarily over possible reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act which requires federal agencies to consider environmental effects before approving permits on various projects (such as transmission or mining). 

Under the Republican trifecta, permitting is likely again to take center stage as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seek to speed up the process for getting more power on the grid amid surging energy demand. 

“We want to make sure that we are in the power position, in a power seat when it comes to energy production, and that we’re not driving that investment to other parts of the world — whether it’s oil and gas or wind or anything else. We want to draw that investment here,” Milito said. 

Fitting into ‘all of the above’ 

While the offshore wind industry faces an uphill battle for new development, advocates of offshore wind are confident the alternative power source can fit into Trump’s energy dominance agenda. 

Heading into the next administration and Congress, many within the Republican Party have been advocating an “all of the above” strategy to secure energy security. Rather than focusing primarily on one source, such as oil, coal, or solar, this strategy seeks to draw on power from as many sources as possible. 

Jenny Netherton, the Southeastern Wind Coalition’s Louisiana program manager, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that not only does offshore wind help meet regional energy needs, but it also helps take advantage of domestic resources, furthers technology development, and boosts up thousands of new jobs. 

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Bright agreed, explaining that offshore wind checks off several desires of an energy-dominant strategy regarding reliability and demand. 

“I think we’re in a place where the benefits of offshore wind are in red and blue states. And when you start piecing together the diversity of our energy mix across the U.S. to deliver what we truly need for demand, I think that there is a place that it can fit in Trump’s plant to be able to deliver that,” she said.