BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 5, 2025
A new wind turbine platform will still float off the coast of Castine for the next 18 months, despite a sudden loss of millions in federal funding to the project and resulting layoffs to the University of Maine research center behind it. But to keep the project going, researchers will have to reduce their analysis of the data, and they won’t be able to come up with a plan to bring the technology to commercial uses that they say would have many applications beyond ocean energy. Almost $50 million in federal funding to the university system has been suspended or threatened this year by President Trump. The federal agency had already put $9.3 million toward the current floating project.