September 22, 2026 — This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
A former Navy sailor and union laborer from Local 1298 on Long Island, William “Billy” Bishop jumped at the chance to work on the water again when he learned two years ago about job opportunities on offshore wind construction projects.
After earning a safety certification from the National Offshore Wind Training Center — a collaboration between Long Island’s Suffolk County Community College, the Long Island Federation of Labor, and multinational wind farm developer Orsted — Bishop worked on a wind farm near Rhode Island. Now he’s doing structural inspections and maintenance on Sunrise Wind, which is under construction off the coast of Long Island in New York.
But the Trump administration’s efforts to crush offshore wind projects, part of its broader assault on clean energy, have created deep uncertainty for training programs like NOWTC and workers like Bishop.
“I would definitely do this forever, and I’ve looked into it since getting the job. But I see contracts are falling through nonstop now in America,” said Bishop. “This might be the last one for a while.”
In 2021, the Biden administration set a target to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, starting from almost zero, which jump-started a massive effort to train people for jobs in the industry. That rapid ramp-up would have required an estimated 77,000 workers — to build the wind farms, connect the turbines to the grid, operate and maintain the facilities, manufacture the rugged steel components, and more.