The state’s alternative energy agency won’t be putting up a building to house a renewable energy research and development center on the New Bedford waterfront, but will pursue the work by other means, an agency official said on Friday.

Months after plans stalled in the City Council in the face of local opposition to the proposed waterfront location, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is shifting course, due in part to questions about the Trump administration, which has expressed opposition to alternative energy. 

The new endeavor called the Ocean Innovation Network Initiative will use existing companies and develop the city waterfront to cultivate ocean-related alternative energy technologies, including but not limited to wind power.

“Ocean innovation is poised to be a major economic driver for the South Coast and we are grateful for the City of New Bedford’s collaboration throughout the evolution of this important project,” Bruce Carlisle, MassCEC’s managing director of offshore wind, said in a statement released Friday morning.

He said the new effort “will provide grant funding and business support to oceantech companies, while we invest in the current expansion and improvement of the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal.”

Carlisle’s statement said the project as first imagined — including a building for researchers and entrepreneurs to work on refining existing technologies and cultivating new ones — was scrubbed for several reasons. 

“With increasing costs, significant uncertainties stemming from recent federal actions, and other factors, MassCEC is no longer able to advance the Ocean Renewable Energy Innovation Center as originally envisioned,” Carlisle said.

The brief statement did not expand on the point about federal action, nor did it mention opposition to the proposed location on Homers Wharf as a factor in the decision. The statement did not mention the cost of the re-fashioned effort. 

A CEC information officer said Carlisle would not be available to provide further details on Friday. 

In a news release put out Thursday afternoon, state Sen. Mark Montigny said that the CEC board of directors had voted that morning to drop plans for what had been called the Ocean Renewable Energy Center. The release said the CEC would still spend nearly $9 million in New Bedford that had been allocated for the project under the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). 

The spending — which has to be completed next year — is to be split between the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal and work that the proposed center would have done, Montigny’s release said. He said the new project “will include programming that leverages space and resources with existing organizations in the city.”

According to the release, up to $5 million would be invested in the terminal, up to $3.8 million in the new venture. These figures could not be confirmed with the CEC on Friday morning.

Montigny criticized the agency for not working more closely with local officials and nearby land owners.

“Prior to announcing such a significant proposal on our waterfront, MassCEC should have openly engaged with community leaders and abutters,” the release said. 

“The continued investment of federal and state dollars into New Bedford is welcomed, but careful planning and community input is necessary to ensure the effort’s success,” Montigny said.

Ward Six Councilor Ryan Pereira said the CEC offered councilors several briefings on the project when the proposed location on MacArthur Drive was chosen. He said he favored the project as a whole, but not in that spot, which he feared would have created too much traffic congestion for existing businesses.

The board decision ends at least one aspect of a project first described in detail in a CEC report in December 2023. 

Early last year, Mayor Jon Mitchell touted the enterprise as an important step in the effort to develop the city as a center of research on ocean-related energy, including but not limited to wind power.

The effort got as far as a proposed 15-year lease for a portion of the Bourne Counting House and about a half-acre of city property next to it for a new two-story building on MacArthur Drive, next to Merrill’s on the Waterfront restaurant. 

Mitchell sent a draft lease to the City Council in late September.  That’s where the project ran into stiff headwinds.

The proposal faced opposition from nearby property owners, waterfront workers and city councilors, who argued that it was not an appropriate location.

Council members received a petition opposing the location signed by more than 200 people identifying themselves as “members of the New Bedford fishing community.” The petition said the new building on that spot would interfere with waterfront commerce.

“The project would reduce the available dock space for the fishing community for the safe docking of vessels and the loading and unloading of seafood products,” said the petition, sent to the council by a prominent property owner: lawyer and retired Superior Court Judge Richard Moses, whose firm is in a building next to Merrill’s.

Moses also wrote a three-page letter to the council objecting to the proposed center on that site. 

“The claimed purpose of this building is to accommodate the offshore wind industry with little or no consideration of those who have invested in the City for decades and all of the people participating in the New Bedford Fishing Community,” Moses wrote. 

Councilors voted to send the draft lease to the council’s Committee on City Property, but it went no further. In late fall, the CEC withdrew the project from the committee’s consideration.

At the time, the agency said it was reviewing the project schedule, budget and possible sites. A written statement from Carlisle implied that New Bedford was still being considered.

“MassCEC remains steadfast in its mission to advance the climate tech industry and create good jobs in the South Coast region and across Massachusetts,” Carlisle said at that time.

Property Committee chair Maria Giesta, the Ward 2 councilor who said she favored the ORE project but not on that site, on Thursday applauded the CEC decision, including the move to invest in the city.

“Good for them that they’re continuing the project” in some form, Giesta said, although she stressed that waterfront investment should be devoted to its chief enterprise: fishing. 

Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org

More stories by Arthur Hirsch

March 12, 2025March 12, 2025

March 11, 2025March 12, 2025

March 6, 2025March 6, 2025