Shifts in tariffs and financial incentives under the Trump administration could spell trouble for renewable energy jobs. But industry professionals say not all is lost.A view of the old Brayton Point Power Station that is slated to become the site of manufacturing and electricity generation for a new offshore wind project.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe StaffSOMERSET —The now-defunct Brayton Point power station looks like a relic from another time, a collection of aging industrial warehouses ringed by parking lots with cracked pavement and rusty chain-link fences.Yet here is where the future of energy in Massachusetts is poised to take its next big step, as SouthCoast Wind’s offshore wind project gears up to make landfall on nearby shores, and the Prysmian manufacturing company prepares to launch a new facility for the underseas power cables that will pipe in electricity from the new wind farm off the state’s southern coast.That is, unless President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his threats to curb renewable energy and impose new tariffs thatcould sharply drive up costs for the imported components needed for the project. If implemented, high taxes, coupled with other economic policies, could threaten the enterprise — and with it, hundreds of new jobs critical to Massachusetts’ efforts to meet its climate goals.The green energy industry has been through this before, with tariffs by Trump in his first administration, as well as by Presidents Obama and Biden, on solar panels from China. If the goal of tariffs is to boost domestic production and punish exporting nations, those earlier levies failed, as Chinese companies simply shifted production to non-tariff countries in Southeast Asia. Now the United States imports its solar panels mainly from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.A study by Cornell, Yale, NYU, and Duke economists found the tariffs did not end up increasing manufacturing in the United States much, but they did have a significant — and negative — effect on the installation sector, which accounts for nearly 30 percent of Massachusetts’ clean energy jobs.Tariffs on solar panels under Biden led to “a small increase in labor in manufacturing, but you had a huge decrease in labor in installation,” saidRobert Stavins, a energy and economic development professor at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.Trump has threatened to pull the plug on offshore wind and directly restrict support for renewable energy production.Last month, he also pledged to slap a 25 percent tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports and an additional 10 percent import tax on Chinese goods. If implemented, imported goods in every sector could go up, including the equipment that powers the state’s transition off fossil fuels, from solar panels to batteries to transmission cables.“For Massachusetts, it’s going to be unambiguously bad,” Stavins said.And here’s the kicker: Experts agree that slowing the expansion of renewable energy will also
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