The offshore wind industry in Massachusetts has spent the last several years trying to find its footing, aided by powerful Beacon Hill Democrats who have called the renewable energy necessary to state decarbonization mandates and a boon for the economy. Now, in the face of industry setbacks, a president hostile to the industry is about to step into the Oval Office.
At a rally in May, President-elect Donald Trump said he intends to target offshore wind power immediately upon taking office.
“We are going to make sure that that ends on Day 1,” Trump said in his May speech, according to NBC. “I’m going to write it out in an executive order. It’s going to end on Day 1… They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is. They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”
Rep. Jeff Roy, who co-chairs the Legislature’s Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy — the chief clean energy and climate change committee in the state — said he is “very concerned” about that threat.
His counterpart in the Senate, Chairman Mike Barrett, also said there’s “lots of reason for concern” but feels “it’s premature to write the obituary for offshore wind.”
“In Massachusetts, offshore wind is key to our efforts here to reach our climate goals by 2050,” Roy said. “An abrupt change in policy like that is going to interrupt that work, and it’s going to compromise our ability not only to get the renewable energy that we need to achieve our goals, but it’s going to interfere with our ability to gain energy independence, and it’s going to interfere with our ability to jump start a new industry and all of the economic development that comes along with that.”
Massachusetts needs to prepare to “once again lead the way despite resistance,” Roy said, and stand ready to continue work on offshore wind against a president who he said wants to “stifle the progress we’ve…