The Healey administration is keeping hope alive for new offshore wind farms off New England’s southern coastline.
This week, the state Department of Energy Resources and three electric utilities disclosed that they have agreed on another extension to file contracts intended to help finance two major energy projects, Avangrid’s New England Wind 1 and Ocean Winds’ SouthCoast Wind.
The Healey administration and the three utilities — Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil — have now given themselves until June 30 to finalize long-term contracts for the utilities to buy power from the offshore wind developers. The filing with the state Department of Public Utilities marked the latest in a long line of extensions in this process, which is in itself a reboot of an earlier round of offshore wind contract bids that were dropped because of rising costs.
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This time around, Governor Maura Healey teamed up with her counterparts in Rhode Island and Connecticut, with the hopes that increased buying power from multiple states would lead to more offshore wind turbines getting built.
Officials in Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced the contract winners in this round in September 2024. They were SouthCoast Wind, New England Wind 1, and a third project, known as Vineyard Wind 2. Collectively, the three contracts would have provided 2,700 megawatts of power to Massachusetts ratepayers, enough for one-fifth of the state’s electric demand, or around 1.4 million homes. All three projects would go up in waters south of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
When Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont ultimately decided not to participate, citing concerns about costs, the developer behind Vineyard Wind 2 announced it would not be financially feasible for that project to proceed, and it was withdrawn.
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Around the same time, President Trump returned to the White House, vowing to do what he could to thwart the growth of offshore wind in the US. Because these projects are in federal waters, and rely on several federal permits, the Trump administration has significant sway over their future.
The utilities and the developers were already having a hard time reaching a final agreement on contracts. Trump’s arrival created more uncertainty, as his administration, at various times, rescinded or froze offshore wind farm permits and issued stop work orders. A March 31 deadline came and went, and then another one was missed on June 30, with the latest deadline to reach binding contracts with the developers pushed out to Dec. 31.
Then, in the fall of 2025, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee’s administration withdrew its participation in the wind-farm contract process, in which it had intended for Rhode Island to buy some of SouthCoast Wind’s electricity, leaving only Massachusetts in the mix.
In their Dec. 30 letter, the three utilities again blamed “ongoing uncertainty caused by federal level activities” for missing the Dec. 31 deadline, and said they now expect finishing negotiations and finalizing the contracts on or before June 30. Although it’s unlikely the Trump administration will change its stance by that date on offshore wind, Trump’s efforts to block offshore wind have faced several successful court challenges.
The latest of those challenges were filed this week in Washington federal court, in which the partners behind the Revolution Wind and Empire Wind projects separately challenged lease suspension orders issued by the Trump administration on Dec. 22. (Trump’s Interior Department cited national security concerns.) Construction on Revolution Wind, on behalf of ratepayers in Rhode Island and Connecticut, is nearing completion, and work has started for Empire Wind off New York’s Long Island.
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Other projects in waters off New England that face lease suspension orders include Vineyard Wind 1, also nearly complete, to serve Massachusetts, and Sunrise Wind, for New York. Sunrise Wind developer Ørsted, a partner in the Revolution Wind project, said it’s still reviewing its options with regard to the Sunrise Wind lease suspension.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
Mass. offshore wind contracts get filing extension again
