Trump administration to pay French company $1B to walk away from US
offshore wind leases
[March 24, 2026] By
JENNIFER McDERMOTT and MATTHEW DALY
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to
a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the
administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other
renewable energy.
TotalEnergies has agreed to what's essentially a refund of its leases
for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will
invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of
Interior announced Monday.
President Donald Trump's administration has tried to halt offshore wind
construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders.
The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the
French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay
for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly
offshore wind industry.″
Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block
wind projects, with one group calling it a “billion-dollar bribe” to
kill clean energy.
“After losing again and again in court on his illegal stop-work orders,
Trump has found another way to strangle offshore wind: pay them to walk
away,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action.
In his second term, Trump has gone all in on fossil fuels, which he says
will lower costs for families, increase reliability and help the U.S.
maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence.
TotalEnergies had already paused its two projects after Trump was
elected.
The company pledged to not develop any new offshore wind projects in the
United States. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement that
TotalEnegeries renounced offshore wind development in the United States
in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees, “considering that
the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s
interest.”
Pouyanné said the refunded lease fees will finance the construction of a
liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and the development of its oil and
gas activities, calling it a “more efficient use of capital” in the U.S.
After it makes those investments, TotalEnergies will be reimbursed, up
to the amount paid in lease purchases for offshore wind, according to
the DOI.
“We welcome TotalEnergies’ commitment to developing projects that
produce dependable, affordable power to lower Americans’ monthly
bills,'' Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Trump was “using a
pay-not-to-play scheme” to pressure the French company not to build
offshore wind, calling it “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Hochul said she remains committed to moving forward with an
“all-of-the-above approach” that includes renewables, nuclear power and
other energy sources.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said this is “a terrible
deal for the people of North Carolina and our country.”
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A sign for the French company TotalEnergies is displayed at
headquarters March 21, 2025, in La Defense business district outside
of Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla, File)
 “Our state has the offshore wind
potential to power millions of homes with renewable American-made
energy. It’s ludicrous and wasteful that the Trump administration is
spending $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay off a company to stop
it from investing private dollars to create the clean energy we
need," Stein said in a statement.
The Biden administration sought to ramp up offshore wind as a
climate change solution. Trump began reversing U.S. energy policies
his first day in office with executive orders aimed at boosting oil,
gas and coal. Globally the offshore wind market is growing, with
China leading the world in new installations.
The Interior Department halted construction on five major East Coast
offshore wind projects days before Christmas, citing national
security concerns. Developers and states sued, and federal judges
allowed all five projects to resume construction, essentially
concluding that the government did not show the risk was so imminent
that construction must halt.
On Monday, one of the wind farms targeted by the administration,
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, started delivering power to the grid
for Virginia. The developer, Richmond-based Dominion Energy,
announced the milestone.
Ted Kelly, clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund,
called the proposed deal “an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars
to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly
when they need it most.”
East Coast states are building offshore wind because it boosts
affordable electricity supply on the grid, even as natural gas
prices are rising, Kelly said.
TotalEnergies purchased a lease for its Carolina Long Bay project in
2022 for about $133 million. It aimed to generate more than 1
gigawatt there, enough to power about 300,000 homes. It purchased
the lease off New York and New Jersey, also in 2022, for $795
million. This was planned as a larger project, with the potential to
generate 3 gigawatts of clean energy to power nearly one million
homes. TotalEnergies is involved in major offshore wind projects in
Europe and Asia.
___
Daly reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Anthony
Izaguirre in Albany, New York and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North
Carolina contributed to this report.
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