Massachusetts green tech leaders won’t back down on offshore wind

Massachusetts green tech advocates want offshore wind to be the little clean power source that could in the face of hostility from the Trump administration, according to their comments during a panel on the blue economy at the ClimaTech conference earlier this week.

In addition to discussions about the state’s ocean clean tech market and port infrastructure, panel attendees addressed the wind-turbine-shaped elephant in the room: the fact that President Trump withdrew seven major offshore wind leases via an executive order in January. Two of the leases affected are for projects that would have been constructed off the coast of Massachusetts, for which the state is suing the Trump administration.

“What’s been a real drag on the blue economy is the new federal administration,” Bruce Carlisle, managing director of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, said during the panel. “It’s kind of depressing, but we do have to talk about it. Certainly for offshore wind, the moratorium and other actions have severely curtailed and put a huge aerial fog on it.”

All that said, though, Carlisle encouraged Massachusetts offshore wind developers in the audience to “keep [their] eyes on the prize,” “ride out” the current administration, and “get ourselves in a position for when things get a little bit better.”

Judith Underwood, the CEO and co-founder of blue tech incubator Blue Innovation Labs, seconded Carlisle’s sentiment.

“I’m staying upbeat about wind, in part because Europe is pushing very strong [for it],” Underwood said. “We can do a lot here in Massachusetts to prepare for the next administration, whoever that will be, and rolling out the offshore wind industry—because we need it.”

Case in point: The New Bedford Ocean Cluster, which partners with the Port of New Bedford, is still marketing the port to offshore wind developers even amid offshore wind “doom and gloom,” executive director Jennifer Downing said.

“This is where Massachusetts can lead while other states are backing away,” Downing said. “We need to continue to lean in and get our supply chain ready, get our workforce ready, start to get startups that are contributing great technology to the offshore wind industry starting to move through that commercialization pipeline so that we are ahead.”