November 5, 2025 — A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Interior Department may reconsider the Biden administration’s approval of the SouthCoast Wind project planned off the coast of Massachusetts.
The order is a victory for the Trump administration, which argued that it had identified issues with the project’s environmental analysis and that a review could result in a withdrawal of the SouthCoast permit.
November 5, 2025 — In the years leading up to the installation of the first turbine off the coast of Massachusetts, government officials, scientists and fishermen convened in conference rooms and Zoom calls to discuss and debate what the fishing industry’s future could — and would — look like amid grids of steel towers.
An oft-uttered phrase was “coexistence” — a realistic goal to those backing offshore wind development, but a laughable suggestion to some fishermen. Accepting there would be impacts, other terms like mitigation and financial compensation peppered the conversations — tools to address effects on fishermen who will tow in and around the arrays as they’re erected, and once they’re operational.
Now, with more than 120 towers standing off the New England coast as of this month, the stakeholders involved can finally put their hopes, doubts, and hypotheses to the test.
The New Bedford Port Authority and UMass Dartmouth School of Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) are partnering up for the first of its kind study in the U.S. that will measure how commercial fishing boats and their varied gear — dredges, pots, trawls, and so on — behave and operate within wind farms. The collected data, they say, can answer some unanswered questions, and inform how coexistence between the two industries can be achieved or improved.
“This project gives us the opportunity to address one of the major uncertainties in managing the interaction of offshore wind farms and fisheries,” said Steven Cadrin, professor of fisheries oceanography at SMAST.
The research project is funded by a $420,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and comes at a time when other studies that would have examined offshore wind’s impacts on commercially fished species and other marine interests, like whales, have been terminated by the federal government.
The final details have not been ironed out, but the testing may be conducted within Vineyard Wind or Revolution Wind (both projects have 80% to 90% of their turbines installed).
November 5, 2025 — There is potentially a lot at stake for the City of New Bedford, its rich fishing industry, and offshore wind power development. While some believe fishing and support for offshore wind can coexist in the same port city, others are not so sure.
Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the potential harms of offshore wind farms, some proposed and some under construction off the coast of Massachusetts and elsewhere in the Northeast.
November 5, 2025 — The financing and federal permitting for SouthCoast Wind remains murky.
But the path is clear for the Massachusetts offshore wind project to run power lines up the Sakonnet River and across Portsmouth to Mount Hope Bay, with approval from the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board on Tuesday.
Power purchase agreements between the project developer and Massachusetts and Rhode Island utility suppliers are not yet signed — despite a Nov. 1 deadline — amid continued uncertainty over the staying power of offshore wind under the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in D.C. granted the administration’s request Tuesday to reconsider a key federal permit which was already approved in the waning days of the Biden administration. The court decision marks a major setback to the already struggling project, allowing the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to start anew on a comprehensive review of potential environmental and economic consequences of the project.
A spokesperson for SouthCoast Wind did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the court order Tuesday afternoon.
November 5, 2025 — A federal judge in Washington ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may reconsider the Biden-era approval of SouthCoast Wind, a wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.
The decision dealt a setback to the developers of the project, a joint venture between the energy companies EDP Renewables and ENGIE. And it handed a victory to the White House, which has ordered a half-dozen federal agencies to draft plans to thwart offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the project developers would not “suffer immediate and significant hardship” if the Trump administration were allowed to reconsider the permit.
The decision would effectively allow the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to re-evaluate its approval of the project’s construction and operations plan. The agency had approved the plan on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Mr. Trump’s second term began.
November 3, 2025 — The UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) is partnering with the New Bedford Port Authority on a project titled “Tracking and Modeling the Behavior and Position of Fishing Vessels and Their Towed Gears in Wind Energy Areas.” The project is funded by a $419,462 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC).
The study will examine how commercial fishing vessels and gear operate within and around offshore wind energy areas to better understand potential impacts and identify ways to support safe, sustainable coexistence between the fishing and wind industries.
SMAST was selected as a key partner for its longstanding reputation in collaborative fisheries research and its strong connections to the commercial fishing community as well as its leadership in studying the impacts of wind farms on fisheries. Together, SMAST and the NBPA will combine practical experience and scientific analysis to help shape offshore wind development that supports both economic growth and ocean sustainability.
November 3, 2025 — Top Maryland Democrats are coming out in full force to support a massive offshore wind project currently tied up in federal court.
Baltimore-based US Wind has faced an onslaught of challenges in recent months keeping the company from starting construction on a 114-turbine wind farm off the coast of Ocean City, which is estimated to generate enough power for 718,000 Maryland homes.
In October 2024, the Town of Ocean City and numerous plaintiffs representing the fishing and tourism industry filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), challenging the federal permit approval process for US Wind’s project.
This September, the Trump administration asked the court to vacate the project’s Construction and Operations Plan — approved under the Biden administration — and send it back to BOEM for reevaluation, signaling plans to reverse approvals of the necessary permits.
If the court approves such a move, Ocean City’s lawsuit could become moot.
October 30, 2025 — For decades, nuclear power plant owners have been required by law to set aside money for decommissioning at the start of operations, but developers of two New England offshore wind farm projects face no such immediate mandate. The latter, according to a local grassroots organization, puts federal taxpayers at risk of being on the hook.
“BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) abdicated its responsibility to the American people by relying heavily on the ‘financial strength’ of the project instead of upholding its duty to protect the environment, public health, and safety,” Thomas Stavola, attorney for Save LBI, said last week.
The group is taking BOEM to task over its 15-year deferral of financial responsibility for the owners of Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind and Massachusetts’ Vineyard Wind.
Stavola called the approvals “patently absurd.”
In an Oct. 16 letter, Save LBI, which has swelled to more than 10,000 supporters, urged the U.S. Department of the Interior “to end the egregious practice of letting operators of offshore wind farms postpone providing financial assurance earmarked for the future decommissioning and removal of turbines and related infrastructure.”
The group said the postponement provides the developers with an exorbitant amount of time to establish the necessary decommissioning funds it will take to remove the planned 127 turbines off the New England coast. Stavola and Bob Stern, Save LBI president and co-founder, signed the letter.
“BOEM authorized a deferral for Revolution Wind on the basis that ‘providing the full amount of its decommissioning financial assurance prior to receiving any revenue under its power purchase agreements would be an unnecessary and unreasonable financial burden on the company.’ However, such revenues are received by the company well before the 15-year deferral given,” according to the letter.
Save LBI is asking BOEM to revoke prior financial deferrals and require future approvals to fully fall in line with the Code of Federal Requirements.
In a statement released earlier this month, Save LBI said BOEM’s action does not take into consideration use of funding for unplanned events, such as Vineyard Wind’s blade failure last year, and heightens the chance developers would not be able to finance the removal of aging turbines from the ocean floor 15 years from now.
October 29, 2025 — On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive memorandum prohibiting new offshore wind leasing for all areas of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf and directing his Cabinet to review previously approved projects.
The president’s animosity toward wind turbines already was well-known, going back over a decade to when he couldn’t stop an offshore wind farm from being built near one of his golf courses in Scotland.
“We don’t allow windmills,” he said at an August Cabinet meeting. “We’re not allowing any windmills to go up. I mean, unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago.
“They’re ugly, they don’t work, they kill your birds, they’re bad for the environment,” he added.
That sentiment, as well as the president’s first-day memo, set the tone for a dramatic reduction in federal support for wind energy, especially projects located offshore.
Over the last nine months, the Interior, Energy and Transportation departments announced a series of approval and funding rescissions for wind projects off the coasts of the United States. The administration’s stated reasons for the changes include a preference for energy-dense sources of power, such as that generated by fossil fuels and through nuclear energy, an interest in being more selective when it comes to federal subsidies, and what some experts call unfounded concerns that offshore wind turbines harm whales and birds.
October 27, 2025 — Lawmakers are girding for a fight against President Donald Trump’s apparent plans to open up the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines to offshore drilling.
In interviews Thursday, Democrats called the idea “not lawful,” a “huge mistake” and “absolutely ridiculous.” Coastal Republicans, for their part, said they would also oppose any offshore drilling, though at least one East Coast Republican was open to the idea — albeit with a caveat.
Trump faced bipartisan opposition when he attempted a similar move in 2020, during his first term. He eventually backed down following widespread outcry amid his reelection effort.