Seven States Sue Trump Admin Over $795M Wind Lease Deal
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- Seven states — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont — filed suit Tuesday against the Trump administration, alleging it acted outside its powers when it paid TotalEnergies $795 million to cancel the 3-GW Attentive Energy wind project offshore New York.
- TotalEnergies also received $133 million to cancel its 1.2-GW Carolina Long Bay project, and agreed to redirect those funds toward U.S. gas and power production and exports.
- The lawsuit argues the agreement doesn't qualify as a legitimate Judgment Fund settlement because "the parties to the Settlement Agreement were effectively on the same side" — TotalEnergies' CEO reportedly said the deal "came from us—we took the initiative."
- The cancellation of Attentive Energy and Bluepoint Wind would "reduce available energy production in the New York Bight by 28%," the lawsuit states, undermining New York's grid reliability, economic, and climate goals.
- The Trump administration reached similar buyout agreements with Bluepoint Wind offshore New York and Golden State Wind offshore California, potentially cancelling around 4.4 GW of combined capacity.
- The plaintiffs warn these settlement agreements "serve as a blueprint for other offshore wind leaseholders to receive compensation for the cancellation of their leases," creating a template for further wind project cancellations.
- The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Department of the Interior, and Department of Justice are named as defendants, with TotalEnergies subsidiary Attentive Energy listed as an interested party.
Why it matters: New York and six other states argue the administration's offshore wind buyouts — $928 million to TotalEnergies alone — unlawfully divert Judgment Fund money to a non-adversarial deal the company itself initiated. A ruling for the plaintiffs could block the administration's template for compensating wind developers, protect nearly 4.4 GW of pending offshore capacity, and force projects to proceed in direct support of New York's grid reliability and climate commitments.
