LI, NYC educators tour of offshore wind farms as part of curriculum mandate

Offshore wind power morphed from distant concept to boat-rocking, head-spinning reality for several dozen Long Island and New York City schoolteachers on Saturday when a national conservation group led its first educator voyage to a New England wind-power lease area.

The boat ride sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation was aimed at helping fill curricula following a recently enacted New York State mandate to provide climate-change education in public schools statewide. The federation and advocating students pushed hard for the state Board of Regents to pass the mandate in March, said Emily Fano, climate resilience education leader at the federation.

"This is a wonderful way for you all to learn about this and bring it back to your classrooms," she told the group.

The high-speed ferry left Greenport early Saturday, taking a route that passed Plum Island and later, Block Island, Rhode Island, where the nation’s first five offshore turbines began operating in 2016.

The main attraction was the South Fork Wind, the 12-turbine array 35 miles off Montauk that has been producing power to the East End of Long Island since 2023, powering tens of thousands of homes year-round, but mostly in winter.

The ship also passed the recently completed Revolution Wind farm, a 65-turbine project that is bringing all its 705 megawatts of power to the New England grid, chiefly to Rhode Island and Connecticut. It and four other projects had been temporarily halted by a Trump administration stop-work order earlier this year that was thrown out in federal court.

The tour avoided discussion of President Donald Trump's criticism of wind farms, including his efforts to pay big wind developers to stop projects, and claims of harm to whales and national security. No new projects have been permitted since he took office in 2025.

Still visibly under construction was the Sunrise Wind project, an 84-turbine project that’s more than two-thirds complete. The massive array field that stretched to the horizon showed a mix of completed towers affixed with blades, foundations just above sea level, an offshore substation and barge work on the $7 billion project. It’s scheduled to bring its 924 megawatts of power to the Long Island grid next year, making landfall at Smith Point and connecting at Holtsville.

Teachers were impressed.

"It’s a lot more impactful to have that personal experience than to just read about in a textbook or newspaper," said Joshua Maines, a fifth-grade teacher and Climate Action Club adviser at the Barton Elementary School in the Patchogue-Medford district. He called the turbines "stunning."

Kelsey LaPort, a library teacher for the Sayville school district, said the experience was "just breathtaking, to see the scale of [the turbines], see how much energy they produce. And the part of the trip I really loved [was] all the facts."

The federation has been working with offshore wind regulators and developers for the past decade "to advocate for offshore wind to be developed responsibly, with protections in place for offshore wildlife, habitats and communities," said Sasha Horvath, the federation's coordinator for offshore wind energy. (Commercial fishing groups have opposed offshore wind and even some conservationists have complained about "industrialization" of the ocean.)

"With New York becoming the epicenter of offshore wind energy, we think it’s especially important for students across the state to learn about renewable energy, especially when it’s taking place right off their coastline," Horvath said.

Rick Lee, a teacher at New York Harbor School on Governors Island, said he plans to show photos and videos from the trip to his students and supply them with practical information for ongoing projects.

"I’m going to show them pictures, and I did some video," he said, but he also learned about sensors and companies involved in water quality testing. "One of our senior projects is to have students design an apparatus that can do water quality testing, record it and display it meaningfully." An expert on Saturday "gave me list of sensors and companies involved in surveying," because wind projects "must monitor impact on wildlife. This is perfect segue."