A new state law set to take effect next month marks the end of New Hampshire's flirtation with offshore wind — at least for now.
The measure, signed into law by Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, shortens the name of the Office of Offshore Wind Industry Development and Energy Innovation to simply the Office of Energy Innovation. As the name change suggests, the legislation also removes the office’s mandate to support offshore wind development, and dissolves two efforts to create workforce training programs and develop ports serving the offshore wind industry.
“It’s definitely discouraging, practically and symbolically, when it comes to our region moving toward offshore wind as a meaningful part of the energy mix,” said Mireille Bejjani, co-executive director of New England-based environmental advocacy group Slingshot.
The move comes as President Donald Trump attempts to stop the emerging offshore wind industry in its tracks. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order pausing all permitting and lease sales for new projects, and in the months that followed his administration has attempted to halt the construction of fully permitted offshore wind developments, including, most recently, the nearly complete Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island.
Other governors in New England, a region that has been counting on offshore wind for climate action and grid reliability, have been resolute in pushing projects forward. In fact, every coastal New England state aside from New Hampshire is party to a lawsuit seeking to overturn Trump’s offshore wind executive order.
The law marks a shift from the stance taken by previous governor, Republican Chris Sununu, who was in office from 2017 to 2025.
Swing state New Hampshire has long been a libertarian-leaning outlier in deeply Democratic New England. On climate and energy issues, New Hampshire has generally been less aggressive than neighboring states: It doesn’t have legally mandated greenhouse gas reduction targets, has pulled back on energy-efficiency goals and programming, and recently all but drained its renewable energy fund to pay for other state needs.
For a time, however, the state seemed on the verge of embracing offshore wind. In 2019, Sununu asked the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to convene a task force to facilitate regional cooperation and discussion about the potential for wind development in the Gulf of Maine. The next year, the state created a commission to study offshore wind and port development, and in 2021 the Office of Offshore Wind Industry Development and Energy Innovation was formed and funded. In 2022, the state released an in-depth report that found offshore wind could accelerate the reduction of carbon emissions and create good-paying jobs.
“Offshore wind has the potential to realize many positive economic, energy, and environmental impacts for New Hampshire and our neighboring states,” Sununu wrote in the introduction to the report.
This year’s legislative session, however, saw a flurry of bills aimed at keeping the New Hampshire government out of the business of offshore wind. One proposal even sought to ban its development outright.
The recently signed law is less aggressive, pulling away from offshore wind without prohibiting it. To soften the blow further, the state Senate, led by Democratic state Sen. David Watters, amended the legislation to make it clear that the energy innovation office would still have the authority to do work related to offshore wind if interest is revived in the future.
“The bill as it finally passed still kept a toehold in state government for being able to respond to or prepare for future offshore wind development,” Watters said.
During the legislative process, however, it was clear that many interested parties saw the bill as a referendum on offshore wind in general, not merely the structure of government offices and committees. Public comments during a House hearing on the bill in February dwelled heavily on the perceived dangers of offshore wind, including potential threats to wildlife, possible hikes in electricity prices, and concerns about the intermittent nature of wind power.
The movement against offshore wind, observers said, is driven by a mix of national conservative hostility toward renewable energy and New Hampshire’s unique character. The state Senate is reasonably open to renewables, Watters said. However, the 400-member House — the largest state legislative body in the country, by a wide margin — is far more averse, he said.
Furthermore, the state has always been fiscally conservative, priding itself on its lack of sales and personal income taxes. It was always unlikely to offer tax incentives, like neighboring states, or take the risk of getting locked into a power purchase agreement at prices that could exceed market rates, said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire.
“New Hampshire was never going to be the state that drove the offshore wind industry,” he said.
Still, some clean energy advocates are concerned that the offshore wind law is a troublesome step backwards when the state needs to be charging ahead on renewables. There is widespread agreement that New England needs more power supply to help control soaring electricity prices and maintain grid reliability. At the same time, observers said, restraints on natural gas supplies make more gas-fired power generation unlikely, and building new nuclear facilities would be contentious; either option would take years to begin sending electrons into the grid.
Now, the Trump administration continues to throw up as many roadblocks as possible to offshore wind, potentially scuttling what may be the region’s best — and speediest — chance to build large-scale energy generation.
It makes no sense to let ideological objections to renewable energy get in the way of considering all available resources, said Nick Krakoff, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation.
“They'll say they are for all-of-the-above energy, but don’t even want to consider offshore wind,” he said. “They’re not really looking at the full picture.”
For others, the new law is a reasonable response to political realities in New Hampshire. If the state was never going to be a major supporter of offshore wind, it makes sense to focus the Office of Energy Innovation on measures that might actually have a fighting chance, Evans-Brown said, pointing to microgrids, battery developments, demand-flexibility programs, and electrification as promising options that would help the state make the most of the power production it has.
Advocates and policymakers across the board, however, are holding on to hope that while the state explores other courses of action, the development of offshore wind is merely delayed.
“I do think [it] is likely to come back,” Watters said. “But I am a very pragmatic legislator: We’re just going to have to have a pause on offshore wind.”
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