{"id":81692,"date":"2026-03-24T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=81692"},"modified":"2026-03-23T17:46:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T23:46:27","slug":"trump-administration-to-pay-1-billion-to-energy-giant-to-cancel-wind-farms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/trump-administration-to-pay-1-billion-to-energy-giant-to-cancel-wind-farms\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration to pay $1 billion to energy giant to cancel wind farms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Trump<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the unusual deal, TotalEnergies would forfeit its leases in federal waters for two wind farms, which would have been built off New York and North Carolina. The Justice Department would then reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the amount it paid for the leases during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels, a main driver of climate change, while throttling offshore wind power. It comes as the war in the Middle East has shocked global oil markets, prompting concerns about energy supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times first reported last week that the administration was considering the agreement. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum unveiled the deal on Monday at CERAWeek by S&P Global, an annual energy conference in Houston, where he claimed that wind power was ineffective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe era of taxpayers subsidizing unreliable, unaffordable and unsecure energy is officially over, and the era of affordable, reliable and secure energy is here to stay,\u201d Mr. Burgum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Pouyann\u00e9, the chief executive of TotalEnergies, called the agreement a \u201cpragmatic\u201d business decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen the Trump administration came to power and began setting U.S. energy policy, we said that we\u2019ll have to reconsider, clearly, these offshore wind project developments,\u201d Mr. Pouyann\u00e9 said. He said that since winning the leases, the company had concluded that offshore wind was \u201cnot the most affordable way to produce electricity\u201d and would require federal subsidies that are now being phased out by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo be clear, we don\u2019t renounce onshore wind,\u201d Mr. Pouyann\u00e9 added. \u201cWe continue to invest in onshore solar, onshore wind, batteries.\u201d But in the United States, he said, \u201coffshore wind is too expensive from our point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late last year, the Trump administration tried to quash five wind farms in various stages of construction along the East Coast. It took the drastic step of ordering a halt to construction of the projects, which had each received federal permits after years of review. The projects\u2019 developers and several states sued. Federal judges ruled against the Trump administration in every case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The larger of the two wind farms planned by TotalEnergies, known as Attentive Energy, would have been built 54 miles south of Jones Beach, N.Y. It would have produced enough electricity to power more than one million homes and businesses in New York and New Jersey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The smaller wind project, Carolina Long Bay, would have operated 22 miles south of Bald Head Island, N.C., and could have powered around 300,000 homes and businesses starting in the early 2030s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agreement between TotalEnergies and the administration comes as the war in the Middle East has rattled global oil markets. Some experts have argued that investments in renewable energy, including wind and solar power, can help countries protect against the volatility of oil prices, particularly during wartime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe lesson that folks in Europe learned when the full-scale Ukraine invasion happened was that they really needed to look at their own native energy resources,\u201d said Seth Kaplan, a vice president at Grid Strategies, a consulting firm focused on the power sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York criticized the deal in a statement on Monday. \u201cUsing a pay-not-to-play scheme to pressure a company to not build offshore wind is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars,\u201d Governor Hochul, a Democrat, said. \u201cI remain committed to moving forward with my all-of-the-above approach that includes renewables, nuclear and other energy sources needed to keep the lights on and costs down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representatives for Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Gov. Josh Stein of North Carolina, both Democrats, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representatives for the Interior Department also did not respond to questions about the source of the nearly $1 billion. Energy lawyers said it would probably come from the Justice Department\u2019s Judgment Fund, which is used to pay court judgments and settlements with the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Trump has disparaged offshore wind power since 2012, when he tried unsuccessfully to stop a project visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. He has often called the projects ugly and has claimed without evidence that they are \u201cdriving whales crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it ordered construction to halt on the five other wind farms being built along the East Coast in December, the administration cited a classified report that it said found that the projects threatened national security. Federal judges said they were unpersuaded by the government\u2019s national security claims after reviewing the report, which has not been made public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n