The Louisiana wind industry’s plan for survival: Outlast Trump
Grist · LC · trust 42/100
Louisiana’s offshore wind industry has a date circled on the calendar: January 21, 2029 — the first day after President Donald Trump is scheduled to leave office.
Trump’s policies have brought offshore wind development to a near standstill around the country, with his administration paying developers roughly $4 billion to walk away from projects. But in Louisiana, leaders in the industry say they are trying to preserve their expertise and supply chain in hopes of reviving offshore wind projects under the next administration.
“Come January 21st, 2029, we all get to wave goodbye,” said state Representative Joe Orgeron, a Republican from southeastern Louisiana who worked in the offshore wind industry. “The current administration has been a one-man stopping show. I’m pretty confident, and I’m hopeful that it’ll change.”
Orgeron later put the industry’s near-term strategy more succinctly: “Just wait for the clock to run out.”
To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How
His views were echoed by the other wind energy experts on a panel at Tulane University’s Future of Energy Forum . “The Trump administration has been pretty openly hostile to seeing the advancement of the offshore wind industry,” said Madelyn Smith, a program manager with the Southeastern Wind Coalition, a nonprofit that supports the development of wind power across 11 states.
Trump’s second-term efforts to halt the industry’s growth in the United States started on his first day in office last January with executive orders withdrawing federal waters from new offshore wind leases and halting permitting for any additional projects. The Trump administration also issued a series of stop-work orders for all of the projects under construction. When that sparked a legal fight, the administration shifted tactics, offering federal money for offshore wind developers to simply walk away from their projects.
“For many reasons, it’s very compelling,” Smith said of the payout offers. “And there’s no real pathway for progress in the next two to three years, and some of these leases are quite expensive.”
Smith said developers have relinquished 12 offshore wind leases in exchange for federal payouts, including plans for a 2-gigawatt wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico south of Lake Charles, Louisiana.
To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How
“About $4 billion of taxpayer money has been spent to remove those from the pool,” Smith said. “And those projects also represented about 21 gigawatts of potential capacity.” That’s enough energy to electricity to power more than 5 million homes .
Several Louisiana companies that long served the offshore oil and gas industry had shifted to helping plan and build offshore wind farms on the East Coast. Orgeron’s family-owned supply boat business, along with several Louisiana engineers and metal fabricators, helped build the United States’ first offshore wind farm near Block Island, Rhode Island, in 2016.
For Louisiana companies, the work kept coming. By 2024, nearly a quarter of all offshore wind work contracts in the U.S. had gone to Gulf-based firms, with about $1 billion in investments flowing to the region’s ship and fabrication yards, according to the Oceantic Network , an industry trade group.
Read the original at Grist →
Open in TruthVane →