Floating Wind's 15 GW Target Meets a Shrinking U.S. Leasing Map

The United States once aimed to install 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035, from a standing start of zero. Today the federal government has suspended offshore leasing, bought back existing leases and cancelled wind port grants, and the projects meant to close that gap sit in limbo — including Maine's planned 10-to-12-turbine research array, whose developer suspended offtake negotiations last March citing "recent shifts in the energy landscape."

The technology itself has not stalled. A quarter-scale concrete platform, shaped like a plus sign and supporting a 108-foot turbine, is currently bobbing in the waters off Castine, Maine, where the Maine Maritime Academy's cadets towed it in May 2025. Built by the University of Maine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center, the platform tests designs the center has deliberately made open-source — and it hosts hardware from abroad.

Dublin Offshore, an Irish mooring-technology maker, is testing a shock-absorbing device on the model after winning a U.K. competition cosponsored by the center. "For us, transatlantic collaboration has a very practical value," Darren Hayes, the company's technical director, said in a statement. "This demonstration is the critical final step to deliver the evidence developers and investors need to move towards commercial deployment."

What does the collaboration actually deliver?

Concrete artifacts, not statements. The center has published the technical specifications and software parameters for its alternative steel platform. Emma Edwards, a floating-wind researcher at Oxford University, called that openness "incredibly instrumental" to further research.

Maine's Offshore Wind Research Consortium, launched in 2021 with representatives from state and tribal governments, fisheries, environmental groups and developers, has funded study trips and baseline research. It paid for Maine fisheries representatives to visit an operational five-turbine floating project east of Aberdeen, Scotland.

"The most important question that we have is getting baseline data because we need to know what the changes are" after turbines are installed, said Terry Alexander, a commercial ground fisherman who co-chairs the consortium.

Why did the commercial pipeline stall?

Cost comes first. When the Biden administration launched the "Floating WindShot" in 2022 — a goal of cutting floating-wind electricity costs by 70% — the levelized cost of power from a new floating project ran roughly double that of fixed-bottom wind, as much as three times a combined-cycle gas plant and about equal to new nuclear, according to Lazard and Department of Energy data.

Ports are a second constraint. Studies conducted under the WindShot priced the new and upgraded ports floating wind requires at upwards of $1 billion each, given the need for large staging areas adjacent to deep water.

Technical gaps remain unsolved. "The deployment of commercial-scale [floating] projects is still held back by some technical challenges in our view that have yet to be solved," said Harrison Sholler, a wind energy analyst at BloombergNEF, citing dynamic power cables and offshore substations.

How far does the policy damage reach?

Last December, President Donald Trump attempted to halt five under-construction fixed offshore wind projects on unspecified national security grounds; courts uniformly rejected the moves, but developers lost millions of dollars per day of delay. The Interior Department has bought back existing leases, including some suitable for floating wind, often with the money reinvested in gas plants and export terminals.

"Under President Trump, companies are shifting investment back toward dependable, secure energy infrastructure that can power our economy and lower utility costs," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said after announcing one such deal with Invenergy, which held leases off California and Maine. Those states and at least seven others have sued to invalidate the agreements.

The Transportation Department also cancelled grants for wind port construction in California and Salem, Massachusetts. "We are prioritizing real infrastructure improvements over fantasy wind projects that cost much and offer little," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

"Financiers and developers now see the U.S. as a politically risky market for offshore wind development," Sholler said. A wind trade association recently warned that "the commercialisation window cannot be assumed to remain open indefinitely."

U.S.-based researchers feel the squeeze directly. "It's been hard for the U.S.-based people to continue some collaborations, not because of lack of desire but because of not having the funding or not being able to be publicly seen doing this research," said Edwards, who leads a network of early-career professionals at the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy Hub in the U.K.

Where does the work move next?

North of the border, mostly. Nova Scotia launched a solicitation for 5 gigawatts of offshore wind, including floating-suitable sites, last year — a bid that observers say puts Canada in pole position for floating development in North America.

The Maine center has laid off some wind staff and reassigned others, but it still signs contracts to test component technologies. Its private spinoff, DeepCWind, is bidding to supply planned floating projects in Europe, according to Viselli and Habib Dagher, the center's director. Principle Power, another U.S. firm, has licensed its WindFloat platform to demonstration projects in Portugal, Scotland and France, where it holds operations and maintenance contracts.

"If you all collaborate, there's certain bits and pieces of the puzzle that become cheaper and less risky for yourself," said Arturo Anderson, who leads a floating-wind collaboration for Carbon Trust UK.

Dagher traces Maine's program to the 2008 fuel-price crisis, when heating fuel spiked above $4 a gallon and nearly 60% of Maine voters passed a 2010 bond measure to fund the research. "What you learn in life is that you really need to believe in what you do," he said. "If you believe in what you do, and it's a good thing for society — you don't really stop."

The milestone that decides what happens next is litigation: whether the courts invalidate the federal lease buybacks, and whether Nova Scotia's 5-gigawatt solicitation produces a signed offtake that Maine's array never did.