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Feds now question their own approval of New England Wind

October 29, 2026 — New England Wind is the latest offshore wind project in the federal government’s crosshairs.

In response to a lawsuit spearheaded by Nantucket-based nonprofit ACK for Whales, federal officials are asking a judge to allow them to reconsider their approval of the project about 24 miles southwest of Nantucket.

In an Oct. 20 court filing responding to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, the Department of the Interior agreed with ACK for Whales saying that its previous approval did not adequately explain how the project would comply with requirements protecting the environment, fishing and navigation.

“This filing by DOI is significant in our efforts to protect the environment around Nantucket from the damaging impacts of large scale offshore wind development,” ACK for Whales member Veronica Bonnet said.

The government is asking the court to send the project’s construction and operations plan back for further review under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Read the full article at The Inquirer and Mirror

Trump Administration Targets Fourth Offshore Wind Project for Remand

October 22, 2026 — In what is clearly emerging as a new tactic to derail the offshore wind energy sector, the Department of Justice filed for the fourth time in just a matter of days, asking a District Court to remand the prior approval of the Construction and Operations Plan of a proposed offshore wind farm. The latest target is New England Wind and is drawing angry criticism from environmentalists and elected officials.

The Department of Justice filed a memorandum in support of the long-running case between an environmental group, Ack For Whales, which has been suing the Department of Commerce and Avangrid, the developer of a project known as New England Wind. In the now common tactic, DOJ asks the District Court for the District of Columbia to remand the approval of the Construction and Operations Plan back to the Department of the Interior so that it can reconsider the approval under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

It writes in the memorandum that the approval, which was announced on July 1, 2024, “did not properly consider or explain how the COP ‘provides for’ the subsection’s identified factors.” It is the fourth time DOJ has used a similar tactic to target the permits for wind farms. It took the same approach to challenge the largely completed Revolution Wind project, which should complete commissioning by the end of this year, and then to challenge a series of projects that had gained approvals under the Biden administration but have not commenced construction.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Feds target fully permitted New England Wind project

September 4, 2025 — The Trump administration ratcheted up its targeting of the offshore wind industry on Wednesday, stating its intent to revoke a key approval for the fully permitted New England Wind 1 project, which plans to use New Bedford for long-term operations.

In the document, filed as part of a lawsuit brought by ACK for Whales against the Avangrid project, the federal government said it is “intending to move no later than October 10 to remand and, separately, to vacate” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the construction and operations plan, a permit granted to the project in mid-2024.

Without the permit, the project cannot be built. Separately, the project has been in the process of securing a power purchase agreement with the state, another necessity for project buildout. The agreement has been delayed several times due to the Trump administration’s freeze on offshore wind permitting and the uncertainty it has created.

New England Wind 1 plans to construct the project out of Salem (a terminal yet to be built that last week lost $34 million in federal funding), but house its long-term operations and maintenance hub in New Bedford. Contingent on the project moving forward, the Danish company, Liftra, also plans to establish a crane manufacturing facility in the city.

New England Wind 1’s lease area is located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The project’s first phase plans to install up to 800 megawatts of energy.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Trump, Congress further chill offshore wind industry

July 22, 2025 — The budget law Congress passed this month — termed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — took another swipe at the offshore wind industry, limiting substantial Biden-era tax credits that would allow wind developers to save or recoup hundreds of millions of dollars to build their projects.

Days after its passage, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to further restrict access to these tax credits for renewable energy projects. And last week, the Interior Department issued a memo adding cumbersome review procedures for wind and solar.

Trump’s order directs the Treasury Department to issue guidance and take action next month. Experts are not sure what that will look like, but these recent Congressional and executive actions could imperil two Massachusetts offshore wind projects: New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind.

Much like Trump’s day-one memorandum freezing offshore wind permitting, experts say, the impacts will depend on what stage a project is at relative to construction. For pending projects, they could be enormous.

“The abrupt termination of credits and the additional tangle of rules imposed on these credits could be quite devastating,” said Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Tax Law Center at NYU Law.

Here’s what a rewriting of tax credits means for wind projects

President Joe Biden’s historic 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, spurred investment and buildout in the offshore wind industry and the wider clean energy sector.

It earmarked more than $360 billion for credits, loans and grants. The Oceantic Network, an industry organization, said the IRA was the “single most important piece of legislation yet passed to accelerate the adoption of offshore wind energy in the U.S.”

The credits were scheduled to phase out in 2032. But the new Trump budget law not only phases the subsidies out completely in 2030, it gives projects a new deadline to begin construction if they want the subsidies: July 4, 2026. If they start later, they face an even tighter deadline to finish: they must be operational by the end of 2027 to get the subsidies.

“Everything was going along swimmingly until this new legislation, which really accelerates the process by which projects have to start construction,” said John C. Crossley, a renewable energy attorney at K&L Gates.

It gets more complicated: the IRS defines the “beginning of construction” in two ways. First, a project can be considered “started” if the developer spends at least 5% of the project’s total cost. The second option is for the developer to undertake physical work of a “significant nature.” That can look like the construction of turbine foundations.

Under the longstanding IRS language, either one counts as starting construction.

But it’s these longtime definitions — these options for developers — that Trump is targeting through his recent executive order seeking to bring “an end to years of subsidies.” He has directed the Treasury Department to revise existing guidelines to “ensure that policies concerning the ‘beginning of construction’ are not circumvented.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Offshore wind power contracts delayed, again, to 2026

July 1, 2025 — The next round of offshore wind power projects for Massachusetts moved even further out of reach Monday when state officials got word that project developers and utilities will not meet Monday’s already-delayed target for finalizing contracts and likely won’t submit contracts for state approval until 2026.

The delays affect two projects proposed off Massachusetts, SouthCoast Wind and New England Wind, both of which have plans to use the Port of New Bedford to support construction or long-term operations.

The latest delays are due to “federal level activities,” a letter to the state says — a reference to the Trump administration’s freeze of new offshore wind permits.

Massachusetts selected 2,678 megawatts of offshore wind power, spread across three projects, in September 2024, kicking off contract negotiations. One of those projects, Vineyard Wind 2, has since removed itself from consideration. Another, SouthCoast Wind, has announced a delay of at least two years. Massachusetts gets no meaningful energy from offshore wind, almost nine years after a clean energy law set the state on a path of decarbonization.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light