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An executive order that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office targeting further development of offshore wind complicates, and likely delays, Maine’s budding effort to stand up an industry to capitalize on winds sweeping the Gulf of Maine. The order issued Monday temporarily halts offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pauses approvals, permits and loans for onshore and offshore wind projects. The Secretary of the Interior will review wind leasing and permitting practices for federal waters and lands and will consider the environmental impact of wind projects on wildlife, the economic costs of the intermittent generation of electricity and how subsidies help the wind industry operate as a business.
Trump has for years attacked wind power as harmful to wildlife and has sought to disrupt former President Joe Biden’s target of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, a goal unlikely to have been achieved regardless of the Republican’s election in November. He has instead promised to increase production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal that he says will provide lower cost energy and electricity. At stake are three projects in Maine: commercial offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Maine; a University of Maine research site, also in the Gulf of Maine; and plans to build a terminal on Sears Island to assemble turbines.
COMMERCIAL LEASES The commercial venture involves two energy companies: Avangrid Renewables LLC of Portland, Oregon, a unit of Avangrid Inc., that successfully bid $11.1 million for nearly 224,000 acres in federal waters in the Gulf of Maine in October, and Invenergy NE Offshore Wind LLC, that bid $10.
8 million for about 216,000 acres, also in the Gulf. A spokesman said Avangrid will not comment on how Trump’s executive order might affect the energy company’s project. A spokeswoman said Invenergy, with industry partners, is evaluating the executive orders.
Trump’s pause on permitting likely means that several years will pass before turbines can be installed. But turbines weren’t expected to quickly rise in the Gulf of Maine anyway. Pasha Feinberg, director of renewable energy at the Ocean Conservancy, said projects were unlikely to be built and run in the next four years.
“It takes quite a while to put together a construction and operating plan,” she said. Work that remains to be done includes “site characterization” by examining the sea floor and the ability to anchor the floating turbines, she said. It remains to be seen how much of this part of the project can be done without a new government permit, Feinberg said.
Trump’s directive is “potentially very serious,” she said. But the impact depends on how the Department of the Interior and Justice Department choose to enforce it and the speed at which they move. Andrew Price, president and chief executive officer of Competitive Energy Services, said Trump’s executive order will likely stall lease negotiations between the federal government and Avangrid and Invenergy to move forward with the president’s executive order in place.
In addition, reversals from Biden to Trump and possibly to the next president in four years are “not helpful to the industry when you lurch from one set of policies to 180 degrees opposite,” Price said. “It does not give investors confidence or businesses confidence,” he said. The future is unclear for four other Gulf of Maine commercial lease sites that did not draw bids at auction last fall.
Under Trump’s order, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management would not be allowed to immediately auction them. RESEARCH AREA A second project affected by Trump’s order is the state’s research array in a much smaller area in the Gulf of Maine. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced in August the first floating offshore wind energy research lease in the U.
S. that could allow for up to 12 floating offshore wind turbines able to generate up to 144 megawatts of renewable energy. The research array will allow Maine, the fishing industry, wildlife experts, the offshore wind industry and others to study floating offshore wind as a renewable energy source and evaluate the compatibility with ocean uses and potential impact on the environment, supply chains and job creation.
Chris Wissemann, chief executive officer of Diamond Offshore Wind, the development partner with the University of Maine on the research array, said in an email that engineering, research and planning will extend beyond the end of Trump’s second term in January 2029. No federal action, he said, “is necessary or expected for the research array for more than five years.” In addition, a likely delay in the commercial offshore wind projects “actually opens the door for the Maine Research Array to become even more relevant” because it sets the standard for accommodating fisheries and other ocean users and “helps the state maintain economic leadership with a smaller, phased port plan that can be funded and built over time,” Wissemann said.
Maine House Republicans agree with Trump’s decision. Rep. Reagan Paul, R-Winterport, has said wind turbine production requires mining, construction and maintenance that require carbon-based energy.
And after a turbine is decommissioned, it becomes “forever waste” because the fiberglass used to produce the turbine blades poses an environmental hazard, she said. Dan Burgess, director of the Governor’s Energy Office, said in an email in response to questions about the impact of Trump’s actions that the agency is reviewing the “range of relevant executive orders.” Directions concerning withdrawal of areas from offshore wind leasing do not apply to existing offshore wind leases such as Maine’s Research Lease, he said.
“Offshore wind remains important to addressing Maine’s energy challenges and the state remains committed to advancing responsible offshore wind, particularly through the research array,” Burgess said. WIND PORT A federal halt to offshore wind may also complicate Maine’s effort to find financing for its preferred wind port site at Sears Island. The U.
S. Department of Transportation last year rejected the state’s application for $456 million to build an offshore wind port. State officials said at the time they will continue to seek funding, but Trump’s executive order appears to foreclose an appeal to federal officials.
In response to a question of what options may be available to the state Department of Transportation, spokesman Paul Merrill said in an email that agency officials are working with the Governor’s Energy Office to review the executive orders. The Governor’s Energy Office on Friday released the Maine Energy Plan that said the state is committed to install 3,000 MW of offshore wind by 2040. “Responsible and sustainable development of offshore wind is essential to meet Maine’s growing electricity demand as well as the state’s clean energy, climate and economic development goals,” the report said.
Federal money fuels Maine’s clean energy and climate goals. Could Trump pull the plug? We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website.
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