Posted on July 9, 2025
The state’s offshore wind power aspirations were set even further back late last month with a six-month delay in the process of finalizing new projects, a slowdown that comes as the governor and elected officials on Beacon Hill are in agreement that Massachusetts needs more energy, really no matter what kind.
Nearly a decade after the state chose to focus its pursuit of cleaner energy generation mainly on offshore wind and Canadian hydro, neither has truly come to fruition and both face difficult political and economic conditions that have state officials reevaluating all of Massachusetts’ climate and emissions mandates, plans and goals.
The governor has also signaled an interest in taking a new run at nuclear power.
“We need to get as much energy into the region as possible. I’ve been saying this for years, and I don’t really care what form of energy that is,” Gov. Maura Healey responded when asked directly by Jon Keller in a Sunday morning WBZ-TV interview whether the state’s emissions reduction goal for 2030 needs to be rethought.
Massachusetts state government has committed to reducing carbon emissions by at least 50 percent compared to 1990 baselines by 2030, by at least 75 percent by 2040 and by at least 85 percent by 2050, with tag-along policies to get the state to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.
The state also has numerous other mandates on the books, including electric vehicle initiatives.
As a candidate for governor, Healey made significant climate promises: including achieving a 100 percent clean electricity supply statewide by 2030 and electrifying public transportation with clean power by 2040 (starting with school and MBTA buses by 2030).
Chronically high energy bills here have some residents questioning clean energy initiatives and President Donald Trump is turning federal government sentiment back toward fossil fuels rather than renewables.
The Massachusetts House’s new utilities and energy chairman said this spring the state needs to “assess our new reality and where we go from here.”
As of 2021, the most recent year with data available, state officials reported they had reduced emissions 28 percent below 1990 levels. The once-in-a-century pandemic was credited with helping Massachusetts meet its 2020 commitment.
The administration also acknowledged the grim picture of the state’s progress toward the climate goals its leaders so often tout.
Energy and Environmental Affairs secretary Rebecca Tepper said in March the Trump administration had “made it more difficult to meet the requirements, specifically on the generation side” with an executive order essentially freezing offshore wind development.
“We had planned on having a significant amount of clean energy by 2030 from offshore wind. So that’s going to be a big headwind if that doesn’t happen,” Tepper said at the time.
The latest check-up on Massachusetts’ offshore wind hopes came in late June, when project developers chosen by the state last fall were supposed to have finished contract talks with utilities.
Massachusetts selected 2,678 megawatts of offshore wind power spread across three projects in September 2024, kicking off contract negotiations that are expected to result in higher prices for power than previously proposed projects.
The next milestone after project selection has repeatedly been delayed. The contract execution date was originally Aug. 14, 2024 and it has now been delayed at least four times since the projects were chosen to begin negotiations.
As the talks have dragged on, one of the projects selected has already removed itself from consideration and another has flagged the potential for a four-year delay.
The utilities negotiating contracts with the remaining projects informed the Department of Public Utilities in a letter that they will not meet the June 30 target for finishing contract talks, or the Aug. 25 target date for contract filings.
The evaluation team involved in the process, which includes the Department of Energy Resources, National Grid, Eversource and Unitil, said the latest delays are “due to ongoing uncertainty caused by federal level activities.”
The group said it now expects completed negotiations and executed contracts by Dec. 31. Those contracts are now to be filed with the DPU (the step at which ratepayers can learn the cost of the projects) by Feb. 25, 2026.
The latest delay is also the longest so far. Previous contract talk extensions have been for two to three months at a time, while the one announced in June is for six months.
Massachusetts gets no meaningful energy from offshore wind. While the Canadian hydro that was also sought under a 2016 clean energy initiative has been stymied by regulatory and judicial decisions in other states, Healey said last week that “we’ve got hydro coming online this year from Canada to Massachusetts.”
“While the utilities and developers continue their hard work to memorialize the bids in binding contracts, the uncertainty created by the changing federal landscape makes it difficult to finalize contracts. Massachusetts is committed to an all-of-the-above approach to energy, including offshore wind,” Lauren Diggin, spokesperson for the Department of Energy Resources, said. “Offshore wind produced locally in Massachusetts will help lower costs, create thousands of jobs and move us toward energy independence.”
State leaders have largely been warning about the negative financial and health care-related consequences they see in the GOP megabill signed by President Trump last week in Washington, D.C., but it also appears poised to put a massive chill on incentives for clean energy projects including ones Massachusetts may have looked to rely on.
The New York Times reported that Republican senators “quietly inserted” language into the bill that would end federal support for wind and solar energy, and also impose a new tax on future projects.
Healey seemed to make a subtle reference to Washington Republicans’ attitudes towards clean energy during her interview with Keller.
“There is a reason that the states in this country that have the fastest growth in wind and solar – Texas, Louisiana, you know, so-called red states – because this is where we need to go. Everybody needs energy,” she said.
