US to pay almost $1bn to French energy company to kill wind project plan | Trump administration
As an energy crisis triggered by the war in Iran sends global fossil fuel prices soaring, the Trump administration announced it would pay $1 billion to French energy major TotalEnergies to halt its plans to build wind farms off the U.S. east coast.
The deal is the latest blow to the U.S. offshore wind sector, which has faced repeated disruptions to multibillion-dollar projects under Donald Trump.
The US president said he found wind turbines ugly, expensive and inefficient, and his administration moved to increase domestic production of fossil fuels.
Under the deal announced Monday, TotalEnergies will relinquish two offshore leases it had purchased off New York and North Carolina. Trump’s Interior Department will reimburse the company for the $928 million it paid for leases under Joe Biden.
TotalEnergies has committed to not developing any new offshore wind projects in the country, a statement from the U.S. Department of the Interior said, and will invest nearly $1 billion this year in the development of four trains at the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas, as well as upstream conventional oil development in the U.S. Gulf and shale gas production, the statement said.
The deal comes as U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have triggered the largest disruption in oil supplies ever seen, according to the International Energy Agency, and climate advocates say the conflict highlights the perils of an energy system based on fossil fuels.
“This is political theater designed to obscure the fact that offshore wind capacity is being pulled from the pipeline as energy prices skyrocket, even as other offshore wind projects continue to provide reliable, affordable power to the grid,” Sam Salustro, senior vice president of pro-offshore wind group Oceantic Network, said in a statement. “Paying to take local, affordable energy out of the equation leaves American consumers struggling to pay their electricity bills. »
It also follows attempts by the Trump administration last year to halt construction of five wind farms along the East Coast, each of which was already permitted. After states and developers filed lawsuits, courts ruled that every wind project must be allowed to happen.
One of these offshore wind farms, the Vineyard Wind project, located off the coast of Massachusetts, completed construction this month. Days before, another project off the coast of Rhode Island, Revolution Wind, began supplying electricity to the New England grid.
Lena Moffitt, executive director of the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, called the new deal “a taxpayer-funded bribe to kill local clean energy and hand the money directly to oil and gas executives.”
“Trump is deliberately increasing our reliance on the same volatile fossil fuel markets. His reckless war is destabilizing – all while destroying the local clean energy that could protect Americans from this volatility,” she said in a statement.
Xavier Boatright, deputy legislative director of the national environmental group Sierra Club, said: “Offshore wind energy is the clear path to a cheaper, cleaner future, and it is time for Donald Trump to govern by facts rather than his commitment to polluting corporations. »
Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné said offshore wind is not the most affordable way to generate electricity in the United States.
Pouyanne and U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the agreement at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.
Reuters contributed to this report
