As offshore wind projects begin operations, cause of Vineyard Wind blade incident remains unknown

The Biden administration set out to spread 30 gigawatts of offshore wind on the coasts of the United States. While that goal wasn’t reached before President Donald Trump took office, several projects were approved and continued with construction. 

Earlier this month, Vineyard Wind off the coast of Nantucket finished construction, The Nantucket Current reported. Shortly after, offshore wind developer Orsted announced that the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island began providing intermittent power to New England. This week, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach began providing intermittent power to the grid, Virginia Business reported. 

Despite concerns about the impacts of offshore wind to electricity rates and whales, Biden’s wind projects move rapidly ahead. The federal analysis of what caused a catastrophic blade failure on Vineyard Wind in July 2024 still hasn’t been published. 

Waiting for answers

The blade failure dropped a shattered 350-foot blade into the ocean and littered the beaches of Nantucket with debris for months, impacting its economically vital tourism season that year. It took the developer three days after the blade broke to report the incident to the local government. 

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) allowed Vineyard Wind to resume construction of the 62-turbine project. The blade manufacturer, GE Veranova, blamed a “manufacturing deviation” that resulted in “insufficient bonding,” at the company’s facility in Gaspé, Canada. 

Radio Gaspésie, a local media outlet, reported, citing unnamed sources, that senior executives had asked employees to falsify data. A Reuters report, which also cited unnamed sources, said that the company had fired several workers after an investigation revealed they had taken shortcuts on quality control. 

That’s about the extent of the publicly available information on what caused the failure, and no independent assessment has confirmed the manufacturer was responsible, and if so, what’s been done to ensure blades installed on Vineyard Wind aren’t going to suffer the same problems. A spokesperson for BSEE told Just the News that its investigation continues. 

“BSEE is ensuring the investigation is thorough and comprehensive. BSSE’s investigation is currently ongoing and does not have a date of completion at this time,” the spokesperson said. 

More than possible 

There is no official database tracking accidents in the wind energy industry, but Scotland Against Spin, an anti-wind energy group, attempts to track incidents using media reports. 

Based solely on that resource, which would likely be only a snapshot of the number of incidents around the world, the group has found 466 separate incidents of blade failures globally since before 2006. Another 100 incidents occurred prior to 2005, and these include both onshore and offshore wind farms. 

Amy DiSibo, board member of Ack4Whales, a Nantucket-based organization opposed to offshore wind farms, said that residents of the island expect it’s just a matter of time before their beaches are once again littered with blade debris. 

“I'd say it's more than possible,” DiSibio told Just the News. While it’s been over 20 months since the blade broke without a final report on the cause, BSEE moved much quicker when it investigated an incident involving oil and gas. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill released 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of America on April 20, 2010. It’s considered the largest marine oil spill in history. 

A joint investigation team was formed within a week, and an initial report was published just two days after the anniversary of the spill. A final report was published 18 months after the spill. 

No communication from developer

The developer has had a rocky relationship with the Nantucket government ever since the blade incident. The town signed a “good neighbor agreement” in support of the project before construction began. After the blade failure, the developer was largely unresponsive to questions and concerns. 

In July 2025, the Nantucket Select Board issued a list of 15 demands and required the developer to respond within two weeks. Last December, the board signed a new agreement, which many residents say surrendered much of what the town was asking the developer to do. 

The Biden administration required Vineyard Wind to remove all the blades that were manufactured at the Canadian plant, and construction resumed with blades made at a French facility. In December, The Bedford Light published an investigation that found, based on satellite images, that two blades that came from a French factory were also removed. The developer didn’t respond to The Light’s questions as to why they were removed. 

Trump tries to stop construction

The Trump administration halted construction on the projects, citing security concerns over the disruption of radar. Federal courts ultimately ruled against the order, and construction has since resumed on all the projects impacted. The Department of Justice said earlier this month it would not appeal the decisions, E&E News reported. 

The Trump administration did manage to negotiate a deal with TotalEnergies, which held offshore wind leases off the coasts of North Carolina and New York. The administration is providing $928 million to the company in exchange for surrendering those leases and making an investment of $928 million in oil and gas facilities. 

For now, the residents along the East Coast who are in the shadow of these projects will have to keep their fingers crossed and hope that no more blades break. Until BSEE completes the investigation, it remains unclear what caused the Vineyard Wind incident, what the full impacts are, and what can be done, if anything, to prevent it from happening again. 

Kevin Killough is the energy reporter for Just The News. You can follow him on X for more coverage.