The same day that hundreds of tons of concrete floated into Penobscot Bay for advanced offshore wind research years in the making, the Trump administration sent a letter to the University of Maine ordering that all work on the project immediately halt.
The Department of Energy gave no clear explanation for why it was demanding the school stop work on its roughly $12.6 million grant from ARPA-E, the nation’s most innovative research incubator for energy projects and a particular favorite of Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The DOE also issued similar letters ordering that all work halt for two smaller grants awarded to the university, both also related to offshore wind.
Two Energy Department officials speculated the orders could be the Trump administration escalating its retaliation against Maine, whose Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, has refused to bar transgender girls from playing in girls’ sports. The Trump administration has attempted to freeze federal funds and grants to Maine, sued the state over its transgender policies and even tried to make it harder for Maine residents to get social security cards for their newborns.
Just five days after the DOE sent the stop work order for the research projects, Trump’s Department of Justice sued the state of Maine over its sports policies.
All three stop work orders said the university had failed to comply with “national policy assurances” — the rules that grant recipients commit to following in order to receive money from the federal government. That list of rules includes Title IX, the same law that the DOJ cited in its lawsuit against Maine’s policies on transgender girls in sports.
“It makes no specific allegations, nor is UMaine aware of any previous concerns or investigation into its compliance,” a university spokesperson said in a statement shared with NOTUS about the stop work order.
Trump’s Agriculture Department in March briefly suspended its grant funding to the university, citing Title IX, but that funding was swiftly restored after the department determined that the university was in compliance with the rules.
The DOE and the Maine governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The stop work orders are in line with President Donald Trump’s attacks on the U.S. offshore wind industry. Trump’s administration has gone to great lengths to decimate U.S. investment in wind. His latest salvo went much further than the industry anticipated, with his administration ordering that construction stop on an active offshore wind project off the coast of New York that had already secured its federal permits.
Offshore wind efforts in Maine are especially unpopular with the state’s fishermen and lobstermen, who have lobbied hard against its development in the state and have found a strong ally in Trump.
“From NEFSA’s perspective, it’s become increasingly evident that proponents of offshore wind are determined to industrialize the Gulf, regardless of the consequences or lack of meaningful research,” said Dustin W. Delano, a representative for the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association.
In August, Maine reached an agreement with the federal government on a lease in federal waters for research on floating offshore wind. Under Trump, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has not yet made any move to change that lease, but the company that was planning to sell energy from floating turbines located on that research area suspended negotiations with Maine after Trump’s orders attacking the industry.
The Biden administration also offered the first lease sales for commercial floating offshore wind projects off the coast of Maine in October, a move that angered Delano’s organization. “The previous administration made it clear that scientific research wasn’t a priority. BOEM hastily designated new wind energy areas and moved them to auction before the University of Maine’s project had even broken ground,” Delano said.
Between the three suspended DOE grants, the University of Maine has about $4.4 million unspent, the vast majority of which was for the floating offshore wind project. The school also possesses a handful of other active grants from the Department of Energy that did not receive stop work orders, including one for research into advanced semiconductor technology.
The University of Maine won the $12.5 million award from ARPA-E in July in a national competition for the most promising research into floating offshore wind farms. Currently, existing U.S. commercial offshore wind farms consist of turbines that are embedded on the seafloor. The Maine research is for next-generation turbine technology that would instead float on a hull anchored to the sea bed, much like a ship, and the researchers were planning on studying how to reduce offshore turbines’ impact on the surrounding waves and wind.
The university had already hired a construction company to build the tower and blades on the concrete platform in the next six weeks, but now that effort will have to be put on indefinite hold. Once assembled, the research platform was scheduled to be towed off the coast of Castine in late May, where it would collect data for 18 months. The timeline has already been significantly disrupted.
“The university is assessing the federal notice, which states that the suspension period may not exceed 90 calendar days, and the next steps for the project and related Maine contracts and jobs. It will provide additional public comment when its analysis is complete,” a university spokesperson wrote.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.