(Opinion) Offshore wind is meeting the moment

East Coast offshore wind projects offer a cleaner, more affordable energy solution to meet growing demand

Rob Werner

ENERGY

By: Rob Werner

This past winter was a cold and stormy one for New Hampshire, reminiscent of seasons past with plenty of opportunities for winter recreation and the economic benefits that flow from winter sports tourism.

While our winter season is enjoyable for many, it also poses challenges and brings a force that is often much harder for our New England region to bear — the cost of keeping the lights on and our homes warm.

We’ve been navigating this energy storm for decades in the Granite State. Our energy bills are among the highest in the nation, as much as 39% higher than the national average. In New England, the biggest driver behind energy price spikes is our over-reliance on liquified natural gas (LNG).

LNG is a highly volatile energy source whose costs are constantly at the mercy of global markets, geopolitics and disruptions to global trade. Ratepayers are also on the hook to cover costs related to updating the infrastructure needed to deliver the gas to our homes. Enough is enough!

As our region’s demand for energy increases, we need to diversify our energy portfolio with renewable energy sources to drive down prices and increase our grid’s stability during times of peak energy demand. Our best opportunity to meet our increased energy demands is with offshore wind.

Offshore wind is clean, affordable and reliable energy operating just off our coast. It provides thousands of jobs for New England residents, powers our residences and businesses with home-grown electrons, and lowers harmful carbon emissions. Our region is now an offshore wind leader with two projects delivering hundreds of megawatts of energy to the grid: the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts waters and the Revolution Wind Project off the coast of Rhode Island.

Despite the concerted efforts of the fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration’s to strangle renewable energy projects in favor of more expensive legacy energy systems, offshore wind is proving to be a reliable and resilient source of electrons. It is telling that the offshore wind project stop-work orders issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior in December of 2025 citing unfounded and misleading national security concerns were opposed by electric grid operators up and down the East Coast.

Here in our region, ISO New England raised the alarm about increased costs to ratepayers and future electric grid reliability issues if the projected offshore wind resources and their contributions to our energy future did not materialize.

We all know that the AI revolution, the development of data centers, increased adoption of electric vehicles, a significant uptake in heat pump technology and the like will require a large amount of increased energy capacity. The question is, where will all this new energy capacity come from?

It is the job of ISO New England and other grid operators to keep the lights on, and it is clear that the electrons produced by offshore wind are resources that our grid operators are planning on and expect to be available. The offshore wind stop-work orders were overturned in court and projects have been completed or continue to progress, a testament to the rule of law.

According to a report released earlier this year from the Union of Concerned Scientists, offshore wind can strengthen the reliability of our regional electric grid and provide energy savings to our consumers. The report states that, if there had been 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity in the winter of 2024-2025, ratepayers would have saved $400 million in energy costs by driving down our reliance on natural gas and allowing a less expensive energy source to influence market conditions and costs.

During the winter of 2024-2025, New England weathered a series of cold snaps, pushing residents to keep the heat on longer, straining our grid with an increase in energy demand. To meet the needs of the moment, 22 million dekatherms of imported LNG was injected into the system over the course of the winter — the equivalent to 3.8 million barrels of oil. While that addition helped keep the lights on, it meant exposing ratepayers to the consequence of global market costs and the extreme price hikes that can come with it.

With 3,500 MW of offshore wind, we would have more than doubled the energy supply generated by that imported natural gas, removing the need for it to meet demand and the exhaustive prices that came with it.

The addition of 3,500 MW of offshore wind is very much achievable given recent capacity expansions, as Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts and Revolution Wind in Rhode Island taken together are on course to generate 1,500 MW of electricity. These two projects, in addition to our existing regional renewable portfolio, would have superseded our demand for imported natural gas by over 500 MW.

Offshore wind is delivering these needed electrons now, unlike future energy sources that remain on the drawing board and are a decade or more from providing any energy. For all the recent focus on the development of modular nuclear reactors, this technology is only conceptual at this juncture and will not be available at scale anytime soon.

Building new natural gas turbines is expensive and subject to many permitting hurdles that take time and add significant costs to new developments. In contrast, the energy produced by wind and solar is available now and paired with battery storage makes an immediate positive contribution to our regional electric grid.

As we look back on another tumultuous winter, we must ask ourselves if our energy system is truly meeting our growing needs and is capable of sustaining our future energy growth. We can withstand the winters, but without offshore wind, we cannot withstand the need for increased energy demands that come with them.

Offshore wind is ready to provide New Hampshire and our New England region with clean and affordable energy, helping us meet demand when it matters most, at a price that won’t make us second guess our energy use.

Rob Werner is the New Hampshire state director for the League of Conservation Voters.