A blade that fell from a 300-foot-tall turbine and into a Massachusetts cranberry bog has sparked critics of wind energy to renew their call for the state Legislature to back away from its net-zero by 2050 mandate.
Massachusetts is becoming familiar with turbine failures, with Friday’s blade collapse in Plymouth following a similar incident off the shores of Nantucket in the summer of 2024.
The Plymouth Fire Department says it responded to a call from a “concerned neighbor” who noticed one of the three blades on a nearby wind turbine “suddenly missing,” around 2 p.m. Friday. Firefighters found the roughly 75- to 100-feet long blade hundreds of feet away from the base of the turbine, “resting in an open cranberry bog area.”
Firefighters determined that no additional hazards were present, and the turbine’s maintenance company also responded to the scene to conduct inspections and determine the failure’s cause.
The state Department of Environmental Protection told the Herald on Saturday that the agency was coordinating with the Plymouth Fire Department and local officials to “review the incident and ensure necessary cleanup is completed.”
“We were fortunate that this turbine is located out in the middle of the cranberry bogs and not in a residential area,” Plymouth Fire Chief Neil Foley said in a statement. “Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the turbine automatically shut itself down as designed.”
The Bay State is a national leader in wind, particularly offshore, to meet its goals for clean energy and demand for electricity. Gov. Maura Healey has emphasized that the region needs this power.
State lawmakers are looking to reduce carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2050, when Massachusetts is required to hit net zero.
The governor’s office referred the Herald to the state DEP and the town of Plymouth for further comment on how officials are responding to Friday’s blade collapse. It added that the turbine was constructed before the Healey administration.
Plymouth nearly a decade ago approved four wind turbines just over the town line, bordering Bourne, on the “Keith Mann” cranberry bog, the Cape Cod Times reported in March 2017. The machines’ “large blades” prompted “stories of deafening noise, unexplained headaches, and restless nights from neighbors” after they started spinning in the summer of 2016, the outlet reported.
The Fiscal Alliance watchdog group has warned that residents and businesses can “expect electricity rates to double, along with rolling blackouts,” if the state reaches net zero by 2050.
Paul Diego Craney, the group’s executive director, is calling for a repeal of that mandate and for Attorney General Andrea Campbell to hold wind companies accountable for their failures.
“The images of the broken blade lying in a cranberry bog, with oil leaking out of its gearbox, and fiberglass pieces littering the cranberry bog,” Craney told the Herald on Saturday, “are a reminder of what our future will look like under the NetZero mandate.”
The blade collapse in Plymouth is the latest mishap in the perilous Massachusetts wind energy industry.
A federal judge last week greenlighted the Trump administration to reconsider a major federal permit that was granted to a Massachusetts offshore wind farm days before the president’s inauguration.
Developer SouthCoast Wind responded, saying it’s assessing the decision and next steps, including the pursuit of legal remedies. SouthCoast Wind is a project planned for federal waters about 23 miles south of Nantucket, with as many as 141 turbines to power about 840,000 homes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
President Trump has attacked the offshore wind industry as “ugly” and unreliable compared to fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
New Bedford resident Elijah DeSousa, who founded the Citizens Against Eversource advocacy group, is demanding that the state Legislature reconsider its pursuit of clean energy. He is pointing to the Plymouth blade collapse as yet another example of a “broken promise.”
DeSousa’s group is working to gather enough signatures for three questions that aim to reform the energy sector on the 2026 ballot.
“We’re told ‘clean energy’ is progress,” DeSousa told the Herald on Saturday, “but when turbine blades crash into our land, leak toxic fluids, and leave the people paying the cost, it becomes clear: the legislature’s revenue decoupling system rewards corporations, punishes ratepayers, and hides behind slogans and false mantras instead of accountability.”
The Plymouth turbine failure prompted critics to reflect on a wind turbine blade that tore apart on the Vineyard Wind project in July 2024, littering Nantucket’s beaches and waters with foam, fiberglass and other debris.
Nantucket officials reached a $10.5 million settlement this past July with GE Vernova, the company that manufactured the wind turbine blade that failed on the project.
Healey has said that the company behind the project needs to do “everything it can to address what the town has articulated” in a litany of demands it issued over the summer.
All three Republican gubernatorial candidates — Brian Shortsleeve, Mike Kennealy and Mike Minogue — told the Herald on Saturday that alternatives to green energy must be prioritized instead of going forward with an unpredictable form of energy, which they say has resulted in skyrocketing utility costs.
“Residents of Massachusetts are seeing the real-world environmental fallout associated with wind energy once again contaminating our natural resources,” MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale said, adding that she “urges the Healey administration to refocus on more reliable and affordable sources of energy for our residents.”
Herald wire services contributed to this report
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