United States President Donald Trump will not stop in his efforts to quash offshore wind energy development, as he offers France’s TotalEnergies almost $1 billion to permanently halt its wind projects. The move follows more than a year of Trump badmouthing wind energy, cutting federal financial support for wind projects, and refocusing energy policy on fossil fuels.
Wind contributes around 10 percent of U.S. energy at present, with wind capacity having grown rapidly following the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other favourable policies under the Biden administration. In fact, Wind energy has become the cheapest source of new electricity in the U.S. However, since coming into office last January, President Trump has repeatedly taken aim at the wind industry.
Last January, Trump issued an executive order pausing the approval for wind development. He stated that wind projects were “the most expensive form of energy that you can have, by far.” He has often referred to wind farms as an eyesore, calling turbines ugly, as well as falsely claiming that offshore wind projects kill whales and overstating the impact of turbines on the bird population. Trump also suggested that the lifespan of the average wind turbine is just eight years, when it is actually around 20-25 years.
Trump paused several offshore wind projects in the United States last year, as he put increasing pressure on the industry to halt development. However, in February, a federal judge threw out the Interior Department’s halt work order on a multibillion-dollar wind farm off the coast of New York State, making it the fifth time that U.S. courts have ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to stop offshore wind development. Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction with the intention of allowing the developer of the New York project, Sunrise Win,d to restart construction while the broader legal battle continues.
Now, in the face of rising energy prices linked to the ongoing Iran War (which the U.S. started), the Trump administration is looking to use any means possible to halt offshore wind development. The federal government has announced plans to pay French energy major TotalEnergies almost $1 billion to scrap plans to build wind farms off the U.S. East Coast.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the deal on Monday at the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston, where he appeared alongside TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne. The agreement states that TotalEnergies must give up two offshore leases it had purchased off New York and North Carolina, and, in response, the Interior Department is expected to reimburse the company the $928 million it paid for the leases under Joe Biden.
“We’re partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly $1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration’s subsidies that were pushing expensive weather-dependent offshore wind,” said Burgum.
As part of the agreement, TotalEnergies has pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States and will invest almost $1 billion in the development of four trains at the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas, and the development of upstream conventional oil in the U.S. Gulf and shale gas production this year, according to a U.S. Interior Department statement.
Sam Salustro, a senior vice-president of pro-offshore wind group Oceantic Network, said in a statement, “This is political theatre meant to obscure the fact that offshore wind capacity is being pulled out of the pipeline when energy prices are skyrocketing, even as other offshore wind projects continue delivering reliable and affordable power to the grid.” Salustro added, “Paying to remove affordable, homegrown energy out of the equation leaves American consumers struggling to pay their electricity bills.”
The move to kill offshore wind comes during the biggest oil supply disruption in history, which is driving up energy prices higher and higher every week that the conflict continues. Lena Moffitt, the executive director of the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, believes that “Trump is deliberately deepening our dependence on the same volatile fossil fuel markets his reckless war is destabilising – while destroying the homegrown clean energy that could protect Americans from that volatility.”
Despite the Trump administration’s best efforts to restrict offshore wind development, several projects have gone ahead in recent months, with support from federal courts. The Vineyard Wind project, off the coast of Massachusetts, was completed in March, while Revolution Wind off Rhode Island’s coast launched operations just a few days before.
At a time when U.S. consumers fear rising energy bills (after a year of repeated cost increases), the Trump administration is continuing to attack offshore wind energy, as it favours the development of the country’s fossil fuel resources. The Trump administration will now pay almost $1 billion to halt TotalEnergies offshore wind plans, despite a federal court previously ruling in favour of the French firm’s wind projects.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
