Posted on January 29, 2025
Over 64% of manufacturing and supply-chain investment supporting the emerging industry is in Republican districts, per new data.
Three days before President Trump took office, an undersea-cable company abandoned plans to build a plant that would employ up to 350 people in Somerset, Massachusetts. Media outlets were quick to spotlight the loss as a specter of what’s to come for the offshore wind industry that Trump put on ice with the stroke of a pen last week.
It’s a reminder that Trump’s attempts to kill the offshore wind industry threaten not just the decarbonization plans of a few states, but job opportunities for a wide array of Americans. In fact, over 64% of the offshore wind manufacturing and supply-chain investments made or announced are in Republican congressional districts, according to data from industry group Oceantic Network.
The 64% statistic describes mostly private investment into offshore wind but also includes some public investment, including money flowing in from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s cornerstone climate law and a favorite target of Trump. In total, $3.4 billion has either been invested in or pledged to Republican districts to build a domestic offshore wind supply chain.
“Who’s benefiting? It’s the entire United States,” said Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the group, which previously went by the name Business Network for Offshore Wind.
But Trump last week signed an executive order that paused the approval of leases, permits, and loans for both offshore and onshore wind energy pending a federal review. The freeze will likely impact projects in earlier stages of development while the nine commercial-scale offshore wind projects that already have federal permits in hand appear safe.
It could also ripple throughout the emerging U.S. offshore wind supply chain. Developers have signed nearly 2,000 supply-chain contracts with manufacturing firms in 40 states, including some that are hundreds of miles from a coastline, like Ohio and Wisconsin.
For example, said Burdock, Italian shipbuilding firm Fincantieri is building customized offshore vessels in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, which is part of a Republican congressional district. And in Houston, Texas — which she called the “engine” of offshore wind manufacturing — multiple companies are adapting technologies used for the region’s offshore oil operations to accommodate offshore wind.
Investments reach states red and blue
In a 60-page photo-heavy publication released six days before Trump’s inauguration, Oceantic prominently featured the Republican-leaning regions central to the U.S. offshore wind industry.
A worker smiles at an undersea cable factory near Charleston, South Carolina. Welders with masks work on wind-friendly aluminum parts near the Florida coast. A crowd gathers on a dock near Galliano, Louisiana, for the christening of a freshly painted $97 million vessel purpose-built for offshore turbine installation. The report’s photographs are meant to profile the diversity of workers and places already intertwined in the ongoing construction of ocean turbines across the Northeast.
“You can see the human face behind the industry … beyond the beauty shots of turbines,” said Burdock. “We wanted to show that in our report as proof of the jobs that are being created.”
The May 2024 christening of ECO Edison, the first new-build offshore-wind service operation vessel in the U.S., commissioned by Ørsted to support its Northeast projects and constructed at the Edison Chouest shipyard in Louisiana.
America currently has 73 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in various stages of development, according to the latest data collected by the American Clean Power Association. Before Trump returned to office, the industry group estimated that offshore wind would support 56,000 jobs by 2030. About a third of those would be operation and maintenance jobs while the vast majority would be direct construction jobs, at least in these early years of the sector.
Only one commercial-scale U.S. offshore wind project is in operation today, but at least five more are under construction, all off the coastlines of Northeastern states.
In addition to the money flowing to manufacturing projects to support these installations, Oceantic reports that offshore wind has spurred $1.8 billion worth of direct investments into updating 21 shipyards and across 12 states, like the St. John’s Ship Building shipyard in Palatka, Florida, which sits in a district that’s been represented by a Republican since 1989.
Thousands of workers are also helping to update 25 ports across the East, West and Gulf coasts that will store massive wind components and safely load them onto vessels that can then carry them miles out to sea for installation. Oceantic reports that a recent revitalization project at a Connecticut port created 400 construction jobs and sourced components from Texas.
Jim Pimental, a fourth-generation bricklayer and president of the Southeastern Massachusetts Building Trades Council, told Canary Media that the news of the Italian undersea-cable manufacturer Prysmian Group pulling out of the deal in Somerset was “devastating.”
He lives in the town, a former coal community of around 19,000 where Prysmian had promised to bring 100 direct construction jobs, up to 350 long-term factory jobs, and around $10 million in annual tax revenue. The company provided no reason for abandoning the project — slated to be built on the site of one of the town’s retired coal plants — but Pimental and others believe the political uncertainty over offshore wind’s future played a role.
Pimental said he’s rooting for unions and laborers in other states, including the Midwest and Gulf region, where manufacturing projects might still continue.
“I’ve held out a little bit of hope that all this offshore work would continue to move forward,” said Pimental. “I thought that a lot of these Republican governors and senators would tell [Trump] not to kill this stuff. … I don’t wish any community to suffer job losses like ours just did.”
Priscilla Roper, HR Director at Nexans, is shown here at the company’s subsea cable manufacturing plant located near Charleston, South Carolina. The factory employs 150 people and manufactured cables for South Fork Wind, America’s first commercial-scale offshore project, which began operating in May off the coast of Rhode Island.
Manufacturing boom and bust?
Trump enters office just as America’s clean energy manufacturing sector is building momentum thanks to incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act that have lured a rush of private investment.
A total of $116 billion worth of clean energy manufacturing projects has been announced since the law passed in 2022, according to November data from energy analyst Jack Conness. Most of those dollars — and the resulting jobs — are flowing to Republican districts.
A Washington Post analysis from October, just before the presidential election, found that three times more IRA funds — for both manufacturing projects and power installations — went to congressional districts that leaned toward Trump in the 2020 election. The Post reported that IRA incentives have made onshore and offshore wind power more attractive to investors after two years of stagnant growth. That, in turn, could help boost employment.
Some Republican lawmakers continue to back the tax credits that are enabling this boom in clean energy installation and manufacturing, even as a potential repeal effort from Trump looms.
On Wednesday, eight lawmakers testified at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that IRA funds and tax credits brought jobs to their districts, including Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from Iowa, who mentioned wind-power supply chains in her defense of a key manufacturing tax credit known as 45X.
“This credit is powering a resurgence in domestic clean energy manufacturing, including in Republican districts,” testified Miller-Meeks. “From wind turbine blades to solar panels to battery components, 45X is helping the U.S. build resilient supply chains.”
Union leaders and labor advocates have pointed to this Republican support for certain IRA incentives — and the historic success of the onshore wind industry in Republican states — as reasons to remain hopeful about offshore wind–related jobs.
But that may ultimately prove optimistic.
No Republican lawmaker has publicly warned about manufacturing jobs that could disappear from their districts due to Trump’s anti-wind executive order. Nor has any Republican publicly addressed how Trump’s anti-wind crusade might help further China’s lead on manufacturing clean energy technologies.
In fact, on the heels of Trump’s executive order last week, Sen. Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho, doubled down, noting that the GOP’s new energy philosophy could be summarized as follows: “All of the above, except wind.”
