The first person to hoist a sail predates recorded history; humans have been harnessing the wind for thousands of years. Nevertheless, when the first windmill was first used to produce electricity 1887, it was immediately rejected as the work of the devil. Scottish professor James Blyth installed the turbine in his garden and used it to power his own home. When he offered the surplus energy to his neighbors, they dismissed it out of hand — he got a better response from a nearby asylum, who agreed to install a turbine on their grounds. His own windmills were dismantled and largely forgotten after his death. 

It was a grim start to the industry, and although wind energy has faced the normal uphill battle for any emerging technology, advancing peripatetically against financial and regulatory roadblocks, some of the old NIMBY superstition still seems to remain.

Last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, issued a stop work order on the Revolution Wind project, which was 80 percent complete and expected to come online next year — bringing 704 megawatts of electricity to Connecticut and Rhode Island. In a letter to Ørsted, the company behind the project, the BOEM cited national security concerns, without specifying what those concerns might be. On Saturday, the Trump administration cancelled $679 million in funds that were meant to create manufacturing and logistics hubs for offshore wind at U.S. ports.

These are the latest in the Trump administration’s onslaught against renewables. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump paused new leasing and permitting of wind energy on federal land. The administration has gone on to end Biden-era tax credits for renewables; shut down the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho; introduce byzantine regulations for projects on public land that will make renewables all but impossible to build; and announce plans to cancel an already-approved project off the coast of Maryland. 

To some experts, the Trump administration’s latest actions against offshore wind look like a kill shot for the industry, one that will set it back decades. “International investors … look at the U.S. like a third-world country in terms of investment risk,” because it’s considered so politically unstable, said Hannes Pfeifenberger, principal at the economic consulting firm the Brattle Group. Pulling a project right before completion could scare off investors for years, even if a Democrat is elected in 2028. 

“If you’re the next developer with a proposal for an offshore wind farm, the risk premium that you [would need] is going to be so much greater than it was for the existing facility,” Alexander Heil, a senior economist at the business think tank The Conference Board, told Grist. “That additional cost is going to find its way into utility bills, there’s no question about that. If the goal is ultimately cheap and available electricity, this is not the way to get there.” A recent study from Daymark Energy Advisors found that if contracted wind projects off the coast of New England had been in operation over the past winter, it could have saved ratepayers $400 million. 

The Revolution Wind project may not be dead, though. Yesterday, the Norwegian oil giant Equinor committed roughly $1 billion in financial support to Ørsted, as five Northeastern governors called on Trump to restart wind projects. 

Compared to the solar industry, the market forces behind offshore wind are much more vulnerable to Trump’s attacks, in part because its complex installation process makes it more difficult to scale up quickly. These turbines are so enormous that building an offshore wind farm is more akin to building a dam than a solar farm. “If you stand them up, the largest ones don’t even fit under the Verrazano Bridge,” explained Heil, referring to the New York City thoroughfare that stands about 228 feet above the sea level at its midpoint. These are multibillion-dollar projects that can take decades to build, in large part because the United States’ regulations are not particularly friendly to offshore wind. 

Obviously, because all offshore wind is built on federal land across the outer continental shelf, it’s quite easy for an antagonistic administration to issue stop-work orders that kill projects. But even under a renewable-friendly administration, offshore wind is difficult to permit. In Europe, Pfeifenberger explained, licensing a wind farm “is a one-stop shopping experience,” because the federal government coordinates all the necessary permits when the wind area is leased. In the U.S., “the leases [for turbine placement] are done by the federal government … the grid connections are planned by the regional grid operators, and the contracting is done by states. So having to coordinate three of these processes to make one project work is a lot more complicated to begin with.” 

What this means practically is that wind developers have to request access to the site of the wind farm before they’re certain they’ll be able to get a transmission contract to connect the farm to the grid onshore. “It’s sort of a chicken and egg situation,” said Pfeifenberger.

Compounding these problems is the supply chain issue. The United States is currently hostile to the supply chains necessary to build more offshore wind farms. Turbines themselves require steel, fiberglass, and rare earth elements, all of which are mainly produced in China. 

Installing the turbines requires special ships called offshore wind turbine installation vessels, or WTIVs. The first U.S. ship, Charbidys, started sea trials this year. A 1920 law referred to as The Jones Act mandates that cargo can only be moved within the United States by U.S. ships, built in America and crewed by Americans. The law was intended to shore up U.S. maritime capability and prevent this kind of issue, but the decline of the domestic shipbuilding industry and the dislike of offshore wind among Republicans has left the country without the necessary vessels. The inability to use foreign ships means that companies working in the United States have had to maneuver around the law by transporting parts from Canada or moving turbines out piecemeal on barges to a foreign WTIV parked offshore. Although this procedure is obviously a hassle, there’s disagreement on how much the Jones Act actually affects the overall cost of the project.

The industry has also faced pushback from locals, who find the windfarms unsightly and often insist that they are environmentally harmful and dangerous to marine life, particularly whales. A 2023 report from The Center for American Progress found that the oil and gas industry was behind much of this resistance, and had been actively spreading misinformation about offshore wind. There is no evidence that wind farms cause any outsize damage to marine life. One wind energy expert noted that the industry is held to some of the highest environmental standards under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Although ship strikes are always a danger for whales, boats installing turbines are required to move at 10 knots according to NEPA, which means, the source explained, that “the whale-watching boats are speeding past our boats.”

Should Trump succeed in killing Revolution Wind, its death will likely prove to be enormously expensive to taxpayers. When asked what would happen to the already installed turbines if the project was canceled, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said that the “first thing that happens is much more likely we have blackouts in coming years. … It will jack up prices and make our power a lot less reliable.”  

There is a chance that this is a ploy on the part of the Trump administration, Michael Gerrad, the director of Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law pointed out. Although the administration put a stop-work order on Empire Wind off the coast of New York earlier this year, the White House allowed construction to continue, they claim, after New York Governor Kathy Hochul “caved” by agreeing to allow two new natural gas pipelines through the state. Hochul disputed this characterization, but Gerrard said that “this seems to be [Trump’s] pattern. He makes exorbitant demands and extracts concessions.” 

Regardless of what happens with Revolution Wind, Gerrard said, “stopping a project that has already received its permits and is mostly finished puts not merely a chill, but a deep freeze on investment in technology that Trump disfavors.”