The U.S. offshore wind industry will find out soon where election rhetoric turns into action or turns into hollow words.

Donald Trump’s pledges and threats on the campaign trail suggest he will attempt many transformational changes. But few targets have been identified so clearly and firmly as when Trump said he would end offshore wind on Day 1 of his second term as president.

It was a classic campaign rally message: bold and decisive but devoid of details, delivered to a friendly crowd on a beach in New Jersey, an epicenter of offshore wind opposition.

But given Trump’s longstanding antipathy toward offshore wind, it may have been more than a soundbite.

The industry has attracted tens of billions of dollars in investment and put thousands of Americans to work as it attempts to build a new U.S. power sector.

That would seem to check a lot of Trump’s favorite boxes, many advocates note — if it did not entail thousands of giant wind turbines along the nation’s coastlines.

Path of Most Resistance

Analysts, advocates and industry members speaking to RTO Insider or to public and private audiences in late 2024 see a variety of ways President Trump could thwart offshore wind development.

There is the executive order — bold and decisive but subject to court challenge.

Indirect measures would be harder to fight and could net similar results:

• • Refusing to defend specific projects against litigation.
  • Slow-walking permit reviews.
  • Not holding auctions.
  • Moving to reduce or eliminate tax credits.
  • Limiting the funding and staffing for regulatory agencies.
  • Jacking up tariffs on the expensive (and still almost entirely foreign) components of offshore wind farms.
  • Creating a level of uncertainty that scares off the investors needed to build factories, ships, ports, workforce and other parts of an industrial ecosystem.

Given Trump’s deliberately unpredictable leadership style, it is hard to guess what he will do. Even the more predictable presidents have been known to say one thing and then do another.

An all-of-the-above energy portfolio with both fossil and renewable energy is backed by many Republicans, including former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, whom Trump has chosen to head the Department of the Interior, lead agency on offshore wind regulation.

During Burgum’s eight-year tenure, North Dakota doubled its installed onshore wind generation capacity to more than 4 GW.

Offshore wind advocates have their hopes. But analysts and observers whose comments were reviewed for this report expect U.S. offshore wind development to be at least somewhat stunted during Trump 2.0 — not a full-on implosion but probably well short of the robust growth of the Biden years.

Headwinds

In a mid-December update to clients, ClearView Energy Partners said it sees two scenarios for Trump to deal with offshore wind: Retaliate against one of Biden’s prized initiatives by actively moving to thwart it, or merely refocus resources elsewhere, letting it sputter along without support.

One can envision reasons for both scenarios, ClearView wrote, but Trump’s past attacks on renewables are not necessarily the best indicator: “Campaigning is one thing, and governing is another. Trump has demonstrated a mercurial willingness to reverse or modify his prior stated positions.”

Killing permitted offshore wind projects on principle also would run counter to Trump’s goal of energy dominance and be counterproductive in a time of growing concerns about resource adequacy, Clearview wrote.

Wood Mackenzie said the impact of the Trump administration’s decisions could vary considerably. Restricting permitting and leases would not have much effect on the 10-year outlook, it said, given that nearly 25 GW of projects are far along in the permitting process or have completed it. Limiting finances, on the other hand, would have a greater effect.

“If the administration chooses to not issue guidance on the domestic content bonus credit for offshore wind, or pares back the 45X advanced manufacturing tax credit, investments in a domestic supply chain could be significantly delayed,” Wood Mackenzie analyst Stephen Maldonado said in mid-November. “While Wood Mackenzie’s base case outlook expects 27 GW of cumulative installed capacity by 2033, the compound effects of these constraints could lead to a 30% decrease over the same time frame.”

In a subsequent update in mid-December, Wood Mackenzie said change already was underway, with some early stage U.S. projects mothballed or paused. It said: “The segment’s longer lead times may limit the immediate impact on 2025 budgets, but offshore wind is set to slide down the investment priority list for many diversified renewables developers next year.”

During an American Offshore Wind Academy webcast in mid-December, Boston Consulting Group Managing Director Jeremy Merz said Trump could pull many levers, ranging from financial disincentives to executive orders to a permitting slowdown.

He expects a mid-range approach with mid-range effects on the industry. Individual projects would sustain greater or lesser impacts depending on where they are in their timeline — those that are fully permitted with offtake agreements and a clear path to construction are at much less risk than those that merely have secured a lease and are in early planning.

“I don’t believe it will actually lead to death of offshore wind in the U.S. I think that’s a very, very unrealistic scenario,” Merz said.

But he added: “Given the increased uncertainty that we have at the moment, investors, developers will probably shift some of their capital to offshore wind outside of the U.S., or to other energy sources in the U.S.”

Yvan Gelbart, lead analyst at Spinergie, wrote in mid-November that Trump’s potential actions all could create short-term headwinds for the industry — even a 10% increase in capital costs due to tariffs would render many projects unviable.

He noted, however, that the election cycle brought no significant changes to the leadership of the states that are helping to drive offshore wind development.

Gelbart wrote: “State-level support and approved project pipelines will help mitigate some of the federal-level challenges. While progress may slow, it’s unlikely to come to a complete halt. … The coming years will be trying, but with careful navigation, the industry may weather this storm.”

For a different perspective, look at GE Vernova, a giant among power equipment manufacturers.

It has not taken an offshore wind turbine order in more than three years. Its decision to halt development of an 18-MW model was blamed for the collapse of an entire offshore wind solicitation totaling more than 4 GW in New York in early 2024.

But it has expanded its gas turbine manufacturing capacity.

Consider two paths to 9 GW of generation capacity: In 2019, New York set a 9 GW offshore wind goal and gave itself 16 years to reach it. Shortly after Trump was reelected in 2024, GE Vernova needed just 30 days to book reservations for 9 GW of new gas-fired turbines.

CEO Scott Strazik said during an investor update in mid-December that the company will not chase bad offshore wind deals. Two days later in an interview with Bloomberg News, he doubled down: “The reality is, the economics of this industry don’t make sense.”

GE Vernova will need to start from scratch to assess the finances of offshore turbines, Strazik told Bloomberg, with pricing more analogous to nuclear power than to onshore wind or solar.

Strazik’s comments touch on a larger problem: Whatever effect Trump may have on U.S. offshore wind in 2025, the industry was not swimming along smoothly in 2023 and 2024. It sustained significant setbacks in both years, even as it logged significant progress.

History May Not Repeat

It is probably unwise to predict how offshore wind will fare during Trump 2.0 based on what happened during Trump 1.0. First, the U.S. industry of the mid-2020s is far advanced from the late-2010s industry. More important, President Trump is “mercurial.”

But consider a December 2018 Department of the Interior news release on a Massachusetts wind lease auction titled: “BIDDING BONANZA! Trump Administration Smashes Record for Offshore Wind Auction with $405 Million in Winning Bids.”

Then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke goes on to say: “To anyone who doubted that our ambitious vision for energy dominance would not include renewables, today we put that rumor to rest. With bold leadership, faster, streamlined environmental reviews, and a lot of hard work with our states and fishermen, we’ve given the wind industry the confidence to think and bid big.”

Walter Cruickshank, then-acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, added: “This auction will further the Administration’s comprehensive effort to secure the nation’s energy future.”

So the Trump administration presented at least the appearance of an all-of-the-above approach to energy development.

One also could count the number of announcements Interior has made about offshore wind. There have been 215 under Biden as of late December 2024; 131 during the last five years that Barack Obama was president; and just 43 during Trump’s four years in office.

Or one could ask James Bennett, who was BOEM’s manager of renewable energy programs during the Trump administration and parts of the Obama and Biden administrations.

During an early-November webcast staged by the American Offshore Wind Academy, Bennett suggested the effusive news release about the Massachusetts auction was disingenuous.

“By then, some of the policies had taken hold, and there were some slowdowns, if you will, in the latter part of the Trump administration, which, of course, changed quite a bit with the incoming Biden administration. And it’s been going very, very aggressively since then.”

Bennett also reminded viewers that offshore wind was little more than a paper industry in the United States in 2016. It is now a multibillion-dollar endeavor — and those are much harder to shut down with the flick of a switch.

Pushing Forward

The day after Trump won reelection, Oceantic Network reminded him of the economic value of offshore wind, and of his earlier role in building it.

Several weeks later, Senior Vice President Stephanie Francoeur told NetZero Insider that this remains the strategy. Wind farms totaling 4 GW of capacity are under construction in U.S. waters, dozens more gigawatts of capacity are moving closer to construction, $41 billion in investments have created thousands of jobs and the supply chain spans 40 states.

All this began during the first Trump administration, she added.

“This new administration is signaling a seriousness with expanding domestic energy production, and we really believe that offshore wind energy is going to be a critical part of that future energy mix,” Francoeur said.

Nick Guariglia, outreach manager for the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, said rolling with changes in administration is an indispensable part of offshore wind development — no project can get done in four years.

New York’s South Fork Wind started development under Obama, continued during Trump and became the first completed utility-scale wind farm in U.S. waters during the last year of the Biden presidency.

“There were always going to be changes in Washington,” Guariglia said flatly.

His membership is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about Trump’s return. The industry is fine-tuning its message to emphasize priorities it shares with Trump and continuing with its business, he said.

“We have produced jobs. We’ve spurred economic development. We are literally creating new tax revenues for local municipalities.”

Kelt Wilska, offshore wind director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, said he was excited to see Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey redouble her state’s commitment to offshore wind.

He said states can counter federal headwinds facing the offshore wind industry by offering their own support through aggressive procurements and through supply chain development, both of which the Bay State has done.

It sends an important message of confidence to the industry and to other states, Wilska said.

“This is a national industry,” he said. “It’s taking off everywhere. I give examples of New England, because that’s where I work, but this truly is a regional and also a national industry that is vulnerable.”

That speaks to a key part of the strategy for the offshore wind industry and the larger renewables industry as it attempts to move forward through the Trump years.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed with not a single Republican vote, yet its economic benefits are flowing to Republican-controlled areas.

At the two-year anniversary of the signing of the IRA, the energy and environment advocacy group E2 tallied 334 major announced clean energy/clean vehicle projects. Of these, 278 offered estimates of job creation (total: 109,278) and/or private capital investment ($126 billion).

E2 calculated that 60% of the 334 announcements were in Republican congressional districts, and that they represented 68% of the new jobs and 85% of the investments.

Clean energy advocates hope enough legislators in the slim Republican majorities in both houses of Congress will want to protect those gains that they can temper Trump’s harshest moves.

U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Congressional Offshore Wind Caucus, said via email that attempts at persuasion already have begun:

“The bipartisan Offshore Wind Caucus has been committed to educating members of Congress about the economic benefits of this burgeoning industry and working across the aisle to support the renewable energy job creation happening in communities across America. I’m confident that it will continue doing that work in the next Congress and will look to engage with the incoming administration to help them see the support this homegrown American energy source has throughout the country.”

Dominion Energy, which is building the nation’s largest offshore wind project to date, expects to finish on time and on budget regardless of partisan politics. It has important advantages over other developers: It is a regulated utility with itself as the offtaker, and it locked in cost certainty on the project before macroeconomic factors began to shake the offshore wind industry.

Spokesperson Jeremy Slayton said via email: “Virginia’s clean energy transition and our ‘all of the above’ strategy, including Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, have been underway for several years under multiple state and federal administrations and with bipartisan support from policymakers at every level.

“Bipartisan leaders agree it has been an economic boom for Virginia, creating thousands of jobs and stimulating billions in economic growth, while providing consumers with reliable and affordable energy. Leaders from both parties also agree on the importance of American energy dominance, maintaining our technological superiority and creating good-paying jobs for Americans.”