The Trump administration has erased all wind energy areas in federal waters, including two million acres in the Gulf of Maine.
The zones were developed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to offer wind power leases to energy developers.
Amber Hewett director of offshore wind energy at the National Wildlife Foundation said removing the areas is a follow up to the administration’s earlier order to stop all wind power lease sales.
"The change here is that now, when a new administration comes in, those areas won't be ready and waiting. They have been deleted, and the process will need to start again at the beginning," Hewett said.
Establishing the areas took years of consultation with fisheries, coastal communities, shipping companies, tribes, environmental groups and other interests.
Through those discussions regulators set aside areas that were the least disruptive, Hewett said.
A presidential administration less hostile to offshore wind development could lean on the earlier work, but would still need to restart that process, Hewett added.
The recission does not affect four commercial wind leases in the Gulf of Maine awarded to developers last year.
Maine has banked on building out ocean wind power to meet a goal of using 100% clean electricity by 2040. The state has a statutory obligation to procure 3 gigawatts of power from Gulf of Maine offshore wind in the next 15 years. State officials recently put an indefinite delay on the state's first offshore energy contract citing uncertainty in the ocean wind power industry.
In a statement, the Maine Governor's Energy Office Director Dan Burgess said the state is reviewing BOEM's decision and that the state's energy plan "emphasizes the importance of pursuing diverse resources to meet the state’s energy requirements."
Some clean power advocates expressed alarm at the administration's action.
“This move effectively dismantles more than two years of coordinated, good-faith efforts among states, labor unions, Tribal Nations, the fishing industry, and coastal communities to responsibly launch an offshore wind industry in our region," said Francis Eanes, executive director of the Maine Labor Climate Council which is supported by organized labor groups.
The move would risk developing a new industry in Maine that could provide jobs and growth, Eanes added.
But Dustin Delano, Chief Operating Officer of the New England Fishermen's Stewardship Association, said the agency decision was a "great step forward" for the fishing industry, coastal communities and ocean ecosystems.
The association has fought against offshore wind power and received financial support from a right wing activist group.
"For years fishermen have fought against over regulation and seen the decline of many communities," Delano said in a statement.
"All of this has happened while foreign green energy companies were given rushed lease area approvals and free handouts," he added.
