By David Uberti | Photographs by Sophie Park for WSJ

SOMERSET, Mass. -- Pat Haddad fought for years to keep open a hulking coal-fired power plant in this bayside town of 18,000. After the facility closed in 2017, the locally dubbed "Queen of Coal" transformed into the "Witch of Wind."

Staring down a hole in Somerset's economy, the state representative and others bet big on the offshore wind industry as a way out. A planned factory on the site of the old plant would build underwater cables funneling energy onshore from skyscraper-size wind turbines off the coast. President Joe Biden even visited in 2022, casting the $200 million project as a symbol of America's clean-energy revolution.

But these days the property stands empty, patrolled by deer and wild turkey -- a sign of a dream deferred.

The election of President Trump, who has railed against wind power and promised to kill new projects, hammered what many in Somerset believe was the final nail in the coffin for the proposal, which already was facing shaky demand and permitting delays. The Italian company behind the project pulled out days before his inauguration.

"That's going to be a tragedy for our town," said Haddad, a Democrat who was voted out of office in a November loss that shocked her. "We don't even know what might have been."

Up and down the East Coast, communities like Somerset in recent years staked their futures on the wind farms that were a key part of Biden's renewable-energy push. Government officials threw money into related investments onshore: manufacturing facilities to produce supplies; ports to assemble them; and training programs for a blue-collar workforce to install them. The hope was to create the type of high-growth industry increasingly destined for the Sunbelt.

Those aspirations are flailing. Years of elevated inflation and interest rates, coupled with permitting problems and a lack of U.S.-flagged ships, boosted costs for the highly subsidized sector. Developers shelved projects and took billion-dollar write-downs. Investors fled.

Trump's decade-plus animus for the industry stretches back to the fight over a wind farm near his Scotland golf course. After long criticizing high costs and sharing unsubstantiated claims linking offshore wind to cancer risk and whale deaths, the president in January halted new permits.

Small armies of workers along the East Coast and squadrons of ships offshore are pushing forward projects that began under Biden. But the Trump administration has now taken aim at that work, ordering a New York wind farm in recent days to halt construction, in a potential preview of showdowns across the region. Onshore, would-be suppliers like those eyeing Somerset fear their customer base will never materialize.

In Massachusetts, a training center known as the National Offshore Wind Institute is increasingly diversifying into other safety certifications. Two proposed ports on New York's Staten Island are in limbo, according to people familiar with the matter. Work crews in recent months have scrapped football-field-size turbine foundations in New Jersey.

That state's Economic Development Authority in February said it would accelerate a push to find new uses for a $500 million offshore wind port, a move that Chief Executive Officer Tim Sullivan described as "the adult thing."

"For offshore wind to work in the U.S., you need alignment between federal, state and local policy," he said in an interview. "We actively don't have that now."

The upshot is that any future wind farms may have to rely on more foreign parts painstakingly shipped across oceans, keeping electric bills at levels that residents won't accept.

"Offshore wind costs are high now because we don't have a supply chain," said Barbara Kates-Garnick, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. "In harming this industry at this moment, we are baking in higher costs over the long term."

In Somerset, meanwhile, officials are now scrambling for a Plan B.

"This is the first time our community is truly being hit directly by the election of a president," said Jamison Souza, a local real-estate executive and chair of Somerset's Board of Selectmen, its executive branch of government.

'Too big to fail'

Haddad's family moved to Somerset around 1960, just as a new power plant named for Brayton Point -- a plot of land jutting off Massachusetts' southern coast -- helped fuel a local boom.

The facility at its peak was one of New England's largest, each day burning 10,000 tons of coal and siphoning up to one billion gallons of water from the neighboring Taunton River. Ships hailing from as far as South America dumped supplies onto a pile that could reach 100-feet high, where massive machines arranged the fuel for combustion, echoing like a wooden roller coaster across the nearby beach.

Brayton Point helped electrify this oft-overlooked part of the state, squished between Cape Cod and Rhode Island, making the air dirty but keeping taxes low. Fossil-fuel revenues funded schools, emergency responders and other services only larger cities could afford. Coal workers ordered deliveries from local pizzerias and frequented Portuguese-influenced diners.

As the plant and a smaller competitor across town belched out dust-like particles that covered residents' homes, power companies handed out carwash tickets and helped homeowners hose down their property.

"We had everything because of the power plants," said Haddad, a mother and gym teacher before she ran for office.

The area's fortunes began turning south when the textile industry in neighboring Fall River, Mass., dried up and regulators began to scrutinize coal pollution. While the smaller of the town's two coal plants closed in 2010, Haddad added, "Everyone thought [Brayton Point] was too big to fail."

Few foresaw drilling innovations in Texas and elsewhere that would wind up flooding power markets with cheap natural gas. "That basically shut us down," said Elaine Pereira, a former chemist at Brayton Point who now runs a crew overseeing the property for its new St. Louis-based owners.

In a tightknit town where the coal plants once supported about half the local tax base, residents now cough up more than 80%.

"When any community is flush with money, the politics are very quiet," said longtime Somerset resident Jim Pimental, who is vice president and organizer of the union Bricklayers & Allied Craftsmen Local 3. "Once the plants started closing down and the town had financial problems, it got tougher."

'It's not dying'

Somerset looked to the offshore wind industry to redevelop the site and help fill the town's fiscal hole. But it didn't take long for problems to pile up.

The first Trump administration's review of offshore leases, as well as the Covid-19 economic shock, slowed wind development to a crawl. While the Brayton Point property's owners leased part of the site to a scrap-metal business as a stopgap measure, nearby residents complained of trucks, noise and potential pollution. A judge ultimately ordered the operation to cease.

That primed opposition in the surrounding neighborhood -- also known as Brayton Point -- when Italian firm Prysmian announced plans to build a factory on site. As Somerset offered incentives for a project that promised millions in revenue, unionized construction jobs and hundreds of full-time employees, officials and Prysmian haggled over how many diesel-fueled ships would dock to load massive reels of cables.

Residents in Brayton Point, where anti-offshore-wind signs recently dotted many yards, in February 2024 also appealed the project's state air-quality permit. The move surprised many supporters of the plan elsewhere in town and added a monthslong legal hurdle just before the election.

Residents "availed themselves of an appeal right the state of Massachusetts offers," said Somerset Selectman Allen Smith, who helped found a nonprofit advocating for the Brayton Point neighborhood. "I don't know how you can blame them for that."

Even after clearing that bar, Prysmian canceled its plan less than a week before Trump was sworn in. Company officials have since blamed faltering demand rather than election results.

In Somerset, tense meetings and social-media insults that colored the permitting process have given way to recriminations about what went wrong.

"If we don't find industry that can help support services we have, we're going to have to cut," said Julie Ramos Gagliardi, a nonprofit executive who previously served on the local school committee. "Or, if we don't [cut], this town will become unaffordable."

Somerset officials are still in talks to build a substation where energy from an offshore wind farm will connect to the grid, and some hold out hope that the prospects for larger manufacturing projects will improve after Trump leaves office. Still, Haddad and others fear companies may now tread lightly in a graying town with more seniors and fewer children than the national average.

"I cry every day," said the 74-year-old Haddad, who lost her husband last year. "There's some business out there -- I'm praying -- that will say, 'I'm not afraid.' "

Wearing a jacket emblazoned with "Rep. Haddad" one recent afternoon, the former Queen of Coal said she won't give up fighting for Somerset's energy transition -- or her own -- adding, "It's not dying."

Write to David Uberti at david.uberti@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 19, 2025 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

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