A second Trump term could threaten Maryland’s budding offshore wind industry

Donald Trump has suggested that wind turbines cause cancer. He often points out the death toll wind farms can pose for birds. A "useless and grotesque blot" on the horizon, he once called a proposed wind farm off the coast of one of his golf courses in Scotland. Trump sued over that effort more than a decade ago.

"I hate wind," he reportedly told oil executives during a meeting earlier this year.

If Trump is elected back to the presidency on Tuesday, he could become the leading champion for Ocean City's army of offshore wind opponents, potentially bringing a new industry and big bet by Maryland leaders to a halt before it has even taken root.

Last month, Ocean City made good on threats to sue the federal government over a 114 turbine wind farm sited in view of its beaches, and offshore wind industry observers say a Trump presidency could supercharge this kind of litigation.

The former president has already made clear that he's willing to take aggressive steps to curb the country's nascent offshore wind industry: During a campaign stop in New Jersey earlier this year, he promised to block a wind farm proposed there on his first day in office.

"I don't know how you get more explicit than that," said Timothy Fox, an analyst for the firm ClearView Energy Partners, who has mapped out what he sees as the two possible scenarios for offshore wind under a new Trump administration. Neither is good for the infant industry.

Under the first, what Fox calls the "refocus" scenario," Trump might simply instruct bureaucrats in Washington to shift priorities away from renewable offshore wind development to other endeavors, like offshore oil drilling.

The second possibility is grimmer for offshore wind. The federal government is charged with defending offshore wind projects against court challenges, a near inevitability with such large and locally controversial projects. But under what Fox calls the "retaliate" scenario, Trump could instruct his Department of Justice to side with wind opponents in court.

This retaliatory approach could have big implications for projects like the one US Wind is trying to build off the coast of Ocean City. In what would be a novel legal outcome, Fox said justice department attorneys could take issue with the decisions of their own client, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and file motions to reverse its approval of the Ocean City project.

If Trump does put offshore wind in the crosshairs, it could pose a substantial setback for an industry that many climate experts see as a crucial piece in the country's transition away from fossil fuels.

Off the East Coast of the United States, the wind supply is a resource not unlike the coal beds of West Virginia or the oil fields of West Texas. The continental shelf is shallow there and extends far off the coast, where the wind blows so strong and with such consistency that University of Delaware marine science professor Willett Kempton says it could power the entire East Coast.

If Vice President Kamala Harris defeats Trump on Tuesday, observers expect she'll largely stick to the status quo, continuing to push a goal set by President Joe Biden's administration to develop a titanic 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by the end of the decade. Maryland hopes to get a big piece of that pie: State leaders have set their own target of developing 8.5 gigawatts of wind power off the Eastern Shore by 2031.

But opposition from a Trump administration would come as the offshore wind industry is still trying to regain its footing in serious economic headwinds.

Since the pandemic, a combination of supply chain crunches and inflation has hampered the industry, escalating the costs of building wind farms and leaving developers searching for the bespoke components they need to erect skyscraper-sized towers in the ocean.

For some in the industry, a single ship has become a stand-in for the severity of these supply chain pressures.

The Virginia company Dominion Energy is in the process of building Charybdis, a $715 million ship with a mounted crane and 30-story legs capable of standing on the ocean floor and jacking the vessel above the water. These kinds of ships are necessary for installing turbines in the ocean, but so far the American industry has been forced to rely on vessels based in Europe. To meet the Biden administration's 2030 offshore goal, the U.S. could need as many as five more of these ships, according to a Department of Energy analysis.

At the same time, inflation has exacerbated the already higher costs offshore wind will require of utility ratepayers, at least initially. Last October, the Danish energy company Ørsted — the developer of one of two offshore wind projects in progress off the Maryland-Delaware coastline — backed out of two developments off the coast of New Jersey. Earlier this year, New York scrapped plans for three more offshore projects. Amid industry upheaval, a renewable energy executive at BP deemed the U.S. offshore wind market "fundamentally broken."

Some don't think it's getting fixed.

Gordon Hughes, a former professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, called it "completely cobblers" to suggest the industry's prices are going come down over the longer term. To Hughes, a senior fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics, the last three to four years have proven just how costly it is to stand up an offshore wind industry in the United States.

In theory, companies could make turbines more efficient by building them even bigger, but in Hughes' view those kinds of gains "are rapidly running out." Companies are finding that they can't build these towers much bigger than they already are, he said.

And though some point out that offshore wind is only just emerging in the United States, Hughes argued that the industry is hardly in its infancy on the global stage. In Europe, offshore wind has been around for more than 15 years.

Maryland is coming late to the U.S. offshore wind game, and industry observers said the state has a ways to go to catch up with some of its East Coast peers.

While 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind power represents more than a quarter of the Biden administration's national goal, the Maryland POWER Act establishing the target isn't binding.

Fox, the ClearView analyst, said he cares much more about the amount of offshore generation Maryland has actually solicited — a much smaller 1.3 gigawatts, according to his calculations. The POWER Act sets a ceiling at that 1.3 gigawatt level, meaning that to reach the state's loftier 8.5 gigawatt goal, lawmakers will have to raise the cap.

And even, then, Fox pointed out, Maryland's nonbinding goal isn't as aggressive as the targets of some other Northeastern states.

ClearView estimates that 8.5 gigawatts would power about 60% of Maryland at today's energy consumption levels. For comparison, Maine would be able cover all of its energy needs if it achieves its offshore wind goals. The New England state's population is admittedly close to a fifth of Maryland's, but it already has commitments for the development of 3 gigawatts of offshore power by 2040.

Many observers, though, remain bullish on the future of offshore wind.

Even considering the market and supply chain obstacles, the horse is probably out of the barn, said Kempton, the University of Delaware marine science professor. At this point, Kempton said many of the snags have less to do with policy and more to do with bureaucratic processes like licensing and time-intensive environmental impact studies, which he expects will be relatively insulated from partisan politics.

David Hayes, a Stanford Law professor who previously oversaw offshore wind endeavors for the Biden White House, similarly predicted a bright future for the industry, whatever Trump may have in store.

Maryland's relatively late entry could leave its projects vulnerable to interference if a Trump administration follows through on its threats, Hayes said. On the other hand, there might be some advantages to Maryland's position, he said, since the state could catch the tailwind as economic conditions for the industry are improving.

Demand for this offshore resource is enormous, Hayes said, and it's a matter of when, not if, massive wind turbines begin to flourish along the East Coast.