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By Mark Chediak and Ari Natter
The Trump administration has agreed to roughly $4 billion in settlements this year to cancel planned offshore wind projects, including a $1.22 billion deal with German utility RWE AG announced Thursday, with billions more in projects still at risk.
In addition to RWE, the Trump administration has reached agreements with five other developers, including TotalEnergies SE, to surrender offshore wind leases and redirect reimbursed funds to fossil fuel projects and other investments favored by President Donald Trump. More than 20 leases valued at nearly $2 billion remain outstanding, according to estimates from ClearView Energy Partners, making more agreements likely in the coming months.
“The Trump administration is pulling all the levers it can to constrain the offshore wind industry to the few projects already under construction or in service,” said Timothy Fox, an analyst at ClearView Energy. “And they seem likely to succeed.”
Since returning to office last year, Trump has followed through on his campaign pledge to block wind power, a source of renewable energy he has derided for years. He issued an executive order that halted leases and project reviews for wind on federal lands and waters, a move that was declared illegal by a federal judge in December.
Some of the announced lease buybacks involved projects that were already struggling to advance, said Seth Kaplan, a vice president at Grid Strategies LLC. More than 15 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity across 16 projects was withdrawn from grid operators’ interconnection queues last year alone, according to the consulting firm.
“Companies saw the way things were going and made decisions accordingly,” Kaplan said. “If a developer sees the handwriting on the wall about where things are going they will pullback on spending.”
The administration’s latest strategy appears to be paying companies to walk away from their offshore wind leases for projects that haven’t started yet.
“Rather than waiting years for the projects to materialize, the Trump administration is prioritizing investments in existing infrastructure and functioning supply chains that can create jobs now and deliver economic benefits faster,” said an Interior Department spokesperson.
In March, the department agreed to pay TotalEnergies and its partners almost $1 billion to redirect funds from wind farms off the coasts of New York, New Jersey and North Carolina to oil and natural gas investments in the US.
In return for focusing on fossil fuels, the US will reimburse TotalEnergies “dollar-for-dollar, up to the amount they paid in lease purchases for offshore wind,” according to the Interior Department’s statement.
New York along with six other Northeastern states filed suit in June against the Trump administration to challenge the TotalEnergies settlement.
TotalEnergies Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanné said in the statement that considering “the development of offshore wind projects isn’t in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States.”
California said in June it plans to challenge the administration’s agreement to pay $120 million to Golden State Wind for a lease off the state’s coast with the funds to be reinvested in fossil-fuel projects. Golden State Wind said it has decided not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the US.
“The real question is what happens to the progress that was made before Trump came into office,” Fox said. “After he leaves, there may be few, if any, projects to follow.”
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