PROVIDENCE — With significantly less pushback and controversy than prior offshore wind projects, coastal regulators on Tuesday gave their final approvals for the SouthCoast Wind project.

The offshore wind farm, located 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard in federal waters, will generate 1,287 megawatts (MW) of renewable electricity for southern New England, of which 200 MW will flow to Rhode Island residents.

The unanimous vote from the state Coastal Resources Management Council means, as far as Rhode Island is concerned, SouthCoast Wind can lay its cable in state waters up the Sakonnet River and underground across Portsmouth until it reaches its substation at Brayton Point in nearby Somerset, Mass.

But while the wind farm may have cleared all state hurdles, the hostility toward the offshore wind sector from the Trump administration means SouthCoast Wind is still a long way from becoming operational. Federal officials issued Revolution Wind a stop-worker order twice last year, and despite being overturned by the courts, it resulted in repeated project delays.

Jennifer Flood, SouthCoast Wind’s chief of permitting, said hostility from the federal government had impacted their ability to provide firm milestone dates for final investment decisions, financial close, and other precise timelines.

“The current federal administration does not prioritize offshore wind energy at the same level as the previous federal administration,” said Flood. “We are keenly aware of that, and it’s something that we are working through every day. It does add an additional level of complexity and uncertainty to an already complex permitting process.”

The approved assent from CRMC carries 30 separate stipulations recommended by staff, ranging from the plan to bury the export cable, to environmental compliance, to electromagnetic field monitoring.

Tuesday’s vote also marked the first real action by the newly reconstituted CRMC executive board. In the last month lawmakers confirmed four new members to the council, and re-appointed two veteran members (the seventh member of the council is reserved for a state Department of Environmental Management designee).

Despite federal hostility, the state-level processes for Revolution Wind vs. SouthCoast Wind were a marked contrast. Revolution Wind, which CRMC approved in 2023, took a combined nine hours over multiple hearing dates before council members signed off on the project.

Tuesday’s hearing on SouthCoast Wind, meanwhile, clocked at just over four hours, with much of the public testifying in support of the offshore wind project. While some had specific conditions, environmental groups like Save The Bay, Green Energy Consumers Alliance, and Climate Action Rhode Island (CARI) expressed the need and desire for more renewable energy.

Submitted written testimony also skewed toward support for the project. As of Tuesday morning, CRMC had received 166 pages of letters in support of the project, and only 90 pages of letters from people objecting to the project.

“The truth here is that this is not a choice made in a vacuum. This is a choice between whether or not we allow offshore wind, which will significantly reduce our dependence upon natural gas and petroleum burned in the electricity sector in the winter, or whether we stay on the status quo,” said Christian Roselund, the co-leader of CARI’s Yes to Wind campaign, which supports offshore wind projects.

Commercial fisheries, including anglers involved in the Fisheries Advisory Board, the stakeholder group in offshore wind negotiations for the industry, broadly were still opposed to the project. For them, offshore wind turbines are sited in waters frequently used by the industry for fishing; any impact or habitat destruction, no matter how temporary, could result in serious losses.

Jeff Grant, a lifelong commercial fisherman on Narragansett Bay, said he participated in the FAB process and walked away disappointed with the outcome. The FAB, said Grant, was not adequately composed of the members required by the Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP), and never endorsed the compensation package offered by SouthCoast Wind to cover fishers’ losses.

“The compensation package fails to make the fishing community whole,” said Grant. “I personally believe the numbers of actual impact are greater than reported, but I will concede that the dollar amount that they’ve been suggesting is all we can prove.”

Grant also said a certain percentage would likely be eaten up in administration costs by a third-party administrator. Prior experience in the Rhode Island Future Fishery Viability Trust, said Grant, showed on average 25% to 27% of funds would be spent on administration costs alone.

“This was another check-the-box process,” said Mike Marchetti, another commercial fisher. “Just like all the other ones. We were all very frustrated in our volunteer efforts, what the outcomes were, and we left quite disappointed and disgusted.”

Compensation funds and trusts are typically used to insure commercial fisheries against possible losses due to disruption of their fishing grounds due to offshore wind construction. The fund proposed by SouthCoast Wind and approved on Tuesday would provide $754,906 in 2024 dollars available in a trust, with a cap of $884,014 (due to any future inflation).

Council members expressed concern over the lack of specifics in the viability trust fund. W. Michael Sullivan, one of the council’s newest members, expressed concern over leaving the viability fund without a way to control administration costs.

“If we said go back and have the conversation and come back to the full council with a better-defined plan, do you have any sense of how long that task will take?” asked Sullivan.

“It would take a very long time,” said Kevin Sloan, a coastal policy analyst for CRMC. “Developing the claims process is just time-consuming by itself.”

“The viability trust has consistently told us for years things are messed up, we need more control right now,” added Sloan. “This gives the viability trust, which is run by fishermen and gives fishermen control over their money, also control of the design of their own claims process, and that does not exist elsewhere.”

SouthCoast Wind was the fourth offshore wind project reviewed by CRMC post-pandemic, and likely the last such project in the works for the foreseeable future. In addition to Revolution Wind, which the agency had serious decision-making authority over, CRMC also issued advisory opinions on South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind.