Power offtake deals for two major offshore wind projects off Massachusetts have been postponed again, with negotiators now working toward completing contracts by mid-2026 amid continued uncertainty linked to federal-level actions under President Donald Trump.
The projects are Ocean Winds’ 1,287MW SouthCoast Wind and Avangrid-led New England Wind (including the 791MW New England Wind 1 array), which were selected in a September 2024 auction run jointly by Massachusetts and neighbouring Rhode Island. In the same tender, Massachusetts has already withdrawn a previously offered power deal to Vineyard Offshore, which had also emerged as a winner.
According to a 30 December letter from lawyers representing the evaluation team to the state’s utility regulator, contract talks with the developers remain incomplete because of uncertainty tied to federal decisions. The developers and utilities are now aiming to finish negotiations and sign the agreements no later than 30 June 2026.
Once the contracts are executed, the evaluation team plans to submit the signed agreements to the regulator by 31 August 2026. At that stage, the commercial terms, including pricing under the offtake arrangements, are expected to be made public. The most recent timeline before this revision had targeted closing the contracts by 31 December 2025, adding another delay to a schedule that has already slipped several times.
The latest letter was sent roughly a week after President Trump ordered work to stop on five offshore wind projects that are currently under construction in US waters on 22 December. That construction halt followed an earlier directive issued in January that paused federal permitting for offshore wind; that permitting freeze was overturned in early December, but was quickly followed by the new order affecting projects already being built. The moves form part of a broader pushback by Trump against US offshore wind development.
Analysts cited in the process do not expect projects of this kind to move ahead to construction while Trump remains in office, with his current term scheduled to run until January 2029.
