VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — States looking to upgrade the grid to interconnect wind power off their coasts should look for secondary benefits to lure support, speakers said at Oceantic Network’s 2025 International Partnering Forum on April 28 to May 1.

Reaping multiple benefits from a grid project can help soften the uncertainty that faces many transmission projects, reducing the risk and perhaps opposition, speakers said.

The challenge is “to advance grid improvements that would be beneficial for offshore wind integration and also provide other benefits to reliability,” John Bernecker, director of the Transmission Center of Excellence at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said in the April 29 panel “Strategies for Cross-value Benefits.” Such initiatives can “cost-effectively integrate other resources as well,” he said.

The strategy reflected a view running through several panels at the conference that offshore wind projects could be made more acceptable to a broader community by downplaying the climate benefits and highlighting other positives.

One such example is the planned Propel New York project to improve the grid across parts of Long Island, New York City and Westchester County. Initially designed to connect 3 GW of offshore wind, the final project also improved the city’s connection with upstate New York and Long Island, said Girish Behal, a vice president at New York Power Authority, one of the project developers.

“That’s where the value conversation comes into place,” he said. “Long Island being a constrained area has a high cost of generation, [and] connecting it to the rest of the grid adds resiliency in being able to bring in what I would call ‘off-location’ power.”

Christian Lindeen, commercial lead of offshore wind for consultant DNV, outlined several examples in which the multibenefit strategy has worked in Europe. In the U.K., he said, a study showed how to use submarine cable bootstraps to bypass the onshore grid with HVDC offshore connections. The system bypasses the “constraints that are onshore, alleviating the grid,” he said.

The message, Bernecker said, is that “it’s important that we’re continuing to advance what we can in a mindful way as we navigate the uncertain times.”

Northern Opportunity

The premier of Nova Scotia, Tim Houston, happened to take the stage at IPF a day after the Liberal Party candidate in the Canadian election for prime minister, Mark Carney, was announced as the winner.

Carney is committed to both clean and traditional generation.

“Interesting results,” Houston said. “It’s probably a helpful result for this sector. So I’m excited.”

Houston was billed to speak about “Cross-Border Energy Collaboration,” but he spent time pitching the benefits of his province for offshore wind, and he urged the assembled developers, vendors and other stakeholders to consider partnering with him.

“We have incredible wind speeds. It blows a lot. We have good, good bottom; we have ports. We have a lot to offer,” he said.

Nova Scotia will solicit bids for 2.5 GW of power in 2025 and will follow that with additional solicitations every two years to meet demand, of which there is a lot, he said.

Canada at present has “zero offshore wind,” the premier said, but he believes that “from Nova Scotia, we could power most of Canada.” He said that he hopes wind power can boost the economy of his province, which is ranked lowest by GDP per capita out of the 50 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces.

With OSW halted in the U.S., industry players could ply their trade in Canada, he suggested, adding that his government is committed to the cause.

“I actually think that timing couldn’t be better,” he said. “Because as things settle down in the United States over the next little while, we can be getting to work in Nova Scotia and building up those supply chains and building the infrastructure and creating the energy that is so much in demand.”

Diversity Makes a Good Hub

Developing a wind port hub is considered essential to the supply chain infrastructure. So what makes a good hub? What can be gleaned from the short history of U.S. offshore wind to help inform the development of future hubs?

To answer the questions, a panel focused on hubs in Virginia, Rhode Island, New Orleans and Maryland on April 30.

The hub status of the Port of Providence, which serves the Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island, largely grew out of the area geography: It’s located in a key area of offshore wind activity, said John O’Keeffe, vice president of business development at Waterson Terminal Services, which manages the port.

“We are located in a key area of the majority of the offshore wind activity that’s happened in the past 10 years,” he said.

The Virginia hub, which includes the Fairwinds Landing logistics center, emerged from the area’s strong marine tradition, building upon the benefits of the Port of Virginia, the East Coast’s second largest port.

So when the need for an OSW infrastructure emerged, the state could “simply pivot some of our existing facilities, our existing supply chains, our existing workforce,” said Will Fediw, senior vice president of the Virginia Maritime Association. “We weren’t building anything from scratch.”

The New Orleans wind hub is in large part focused on Port Fourchon, which is the base of 99% of offshore oil and gas service operations in the area, said Cameron Poole, energy and innovation associate for Greater New Orleans. Those sectors have helped the hub grow, and wind has in turn provided them with support during industry slowdowns, he said.

In Maryland, the former site of Bethlehem Steel has been transformed into Sparrows Point, a trade and logistics hub, with an offshore wind component that includes a steelmaking and monopile manufacturing operation. Other OSW elements include the Crystal Steel Fabricators facility in Federalsburg and the Hellenic Cables factory under construction in Baltimore, Maryland Del. Lorig Charkoudian said.

Fediw said a key lesson is the importance of embracing a breadth of industry sectors.

It’s “the idea of administration-proofing your hubs by thinking about more of a diversified portfolio,” he said. “So many projects were wanting to be like, [‘We’ll be] all-in on offshore wind where we’re going to build a pure offshore wind terminal.’ And that created a lot of risk.”

Instead, with Fairwinds Landing, it was, “‘We’re going to buy a terminal; we’re going to develop it; and we’re going to have several business lines here,’” he said. “‘We’re going to do some offshore wind; we’re going to do some shipbuilding, ship repair; we’re going to do some project cargo, and really spread that risk across so that they’re making money.’

“That drives investment and gives the market more confidence, because they see that risk has been bought down,” he said, adding that that approach may have helped wind ports and hubs that are now struggling. “Maybe at other ports and hubs, if they had looked at that approach a little bit, it might have helped de-risk and speed up investment by having more multipurpose terminals.”

Paulina O’Connor, executive director of the New Jersey Offshore Wind Alliance, echoed the sentiment after listening to a separate panel on procurement. She said she liked some of the comments she heard, such as “the pivot to working more collaboratively with other states.” Having completed the first phase of its wind port, New Jersey has no wind project under construction and is looking at alternative ways to use the hub.

“It was very competitive in the beginning: Who’s going to get the turbine manufacturer? Who’s going to get the cable manufactured to their state?” she recalled. “I think we’ve grown and gotten smarter, and now we realize that it is better to be collaborative. And I’m really pleased to see that, and hope that New Jersey takes a step forward to implement that and works more collaboratively with New York and Delaware and Maryland, not only in the supply chain, but transmission development as well.”

Vendors Anxious but Holding Faith

Uncertainty pervaded virtually all aspects of the IPF25 conference, and vendors offering their goods and services in the exhibition hall were no exception.

Several said the conference was markedly smaller than last year, with fewer attendees and vendors. But some also held out hope the sector would rebound.

Melissa Wood, director of sales and marketing at TDI-Brooks International, which operates a fleet of ships that do analog mapping of the sea floor, said she had not been sure she would come to IPF. She has attended the conference for several years and was so bullish when she signed up for the 2025 conference a year ago that she took two booth spaces.

Then President Donald Trump moved against the industry, and the future looked far less upbeat.

“I’ll be honest, we did say, ‘Should we be here?’” she said. “Our owner was like, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be worth my time.’ I said, ‘We’ve already paid for the booth space.’

“We all kind of had the rug pulled out and have to figure out what to do next,” she said. “So it’s obviously slower than it has been in the past.”

TDI has pivoted and found work in the oil and gas industry, the company’s main business for 29 years, she said. But she expects the wind sector to rebound.

“I think within the next 12 months, we’ll see a change,” Woods said. “Maybe things have reset a little bit. … A lot of these developers have had to lay off folks, but they still have kept their permitting strong and their procurement people strong to be able to still trudge forward with the government to try to see if they can turn things around. I think the people here want clean energy. They’ll educate the current administration, and we’ll see a change.”

Attending his fifth IPF conference, James Gura, of the Moran Shipping Agency, a logistics and compliance company in New Haven, Conn., that is working on offshore wind projects, said he expects the sector to make a comeback.

“This convention, I would say, is a little bit slower than conventions in the past. And I think people are concerned about the stability of the market and offshore wind,” he said. But he added: “There is a need for energy diversification in the United States, and I think this is an option to fulfill those needs. We are cautiously optimistic on the future of the industry.”