The U.S. government will pay a French energy firm nearly $1 billion to cancel its plans to build a pair of wind farms off the East Coast, the Trump administration announced Monday in its latest move to stymie offshore wind.
The French firm TotalEnergies will forfeit its leases for projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, with the United States paying $928 million to reimburse what the company initially spent on the leases.
Under the deal, TotalEnergies will reinvest that money into oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to block the development of offshore wind projects, which many East Coast states have been counting on to meet their energy needs in the coming years. The projects canceled under the deal announced Monday would have provided power to more than 1 million homes.
Late last year, the Trump administration invoked classified national security threats to stop work on five wind farms that were under construction, but courts have ruled that the projects can proceed. But for dozens of other projects still in the planning and permitting stages, industry experts expect little progress while Trump remains in office.
The administration claimed in a statement that the projects were “unreliable and costly.” But New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, condemned the agreement.
“Using a pay-not-to-play scheme to pressure a company to not build offshore wind is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Hochul said in a statement to The New York Times.
Environmental groups also blasted the deal, with some noting that it comes as Trump’s war with Iran has caused chaos for global oil markets.
“This deal is an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it most,” Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement.